55L Partial Mash

Since it was posted by Forumite Bevvied last year, I've always been fascinated by the idea behind this thread

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=56857

Make 50-60L of beer and have a large stock of it so it lasts me 3 months or so. Now as a maxi -BIABer my pot can fit a maximum of about 5.3kg of grain To do 55L of 1.040 beer I'd need about 9.5kg of grain, completely impossible for me. However if I did a partial mash I only need 4.5kg of grain, 2.5kg of DME and 800g of Golden Syrup. Definatley doable.

I've no idea how much yeast I'd need but far more than I'm willing to buy so I'm planning to make a regular 23L brew and harvest a good chunk of the yeast cake and chuck it into the 55L of wort

For an FV, I'm going to get one of these

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EDKTPN6/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

It should fit in my brew bag nicely.

I'd be a total masochist to try to bottle 55L of beer. I've 8 easy kegs so I'd use those and the 15L or so left over I'd bottle

Well thats the plan anyway! :thumb:

I've got a 60litre fermenter but I've only ever filled it once. Its very heavy so you'll need a pump or someone to help you lift it high enough to syphon. Even syphoning is difficult because of the depth of the thing. It seemed like a good idea at the time but for me its so much easier to stick to 25 litre batches.

stevey said:

I've got a 60litre fermenter but I've only ever filled it once. Its very heavy so you'll need a pump or someone to help you lift it high enough to syphon. Even syphoning is difficult because of the depth of the thing. It seemed like a good idea at the time but for me its so much easier to stick to 25 litre batches.

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I often syphon beer from my 23L batches into bottling buckets. My FV is usually sitting on the floor. As I have a bad back, there no way I can lift it but I find I can still syphon out about 16L before the syphon stops as the level of the beer becomes too low. But by this time there only a few litres left so I'm able to lift it onto the kitchen work top to syphon the rest out. I plan on doing something similar with the 60L FV.
I have a racking cane connector which means I can connect two normal size racking canes together so the depth shouldn't (hopefully :pray:) be a problem

55L should hopefully last me about 3 months. I wanted to make a pale beer. The concern I had was thats seeing as it will only have an OG of 1.0401 there wouldn't be much late hopping going on. So any late hop flavours wouldnt last till when I came to drinking the end of the batch. So I've gone for making a Helles lager influenced pale ale. Helles styles focus on the malt flavour and often only have a 60min bittering addition. So making this style will circumvent the above problem.

I'm pitching some MJ work horse yeast today into some pale ale wort I made last saturday and will harvest loads of the trub to pitch into the 55L beer

This is the reciepe I'm thinking of going with although it might completely change

Cerberus Helles

Original Gravity (OG): 1.041 (°P): 10.2
Final Gravity (FG): 1.008 (°P): 2.1
Alcohol (ABV): 4.30 %
Colour (SRM): 5.8 (EBC): 11.4
Bitterness (IBU): 16.2 (Tinseth)

3kg Dry Malt Extract - Extra Light
2.5 Munich I
2.5 Vienna

25g Simcoe (13.2% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)

Single step Infusion at 66 C for 60 Minutes. Boil for 90 Minutes

Fermented at 18°C with Mangrove Jacks Work Horse Yeast

If you wanted to do a pale you could dry hop in your mini keg?

DoctorMick said:

If you wanted to do a pale you could dry hop in your mini keg?

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Theoretically perhaps but becasue of the 3 piece bung probably not. To remove the bung there's two red bits. The first you lever off but the second you actually have to push into the keg. To get it out of the keg again you tip the keg upside down when it's full of water when your cleaning it. The the red bit comes out with the cleaning water.
If the keg is full of beer getting at the second red bit would be impossible until it's empty and I'm not sure if it would infect the beer whilst it's in there

MyQul said:

Theoretically perhaps but becasue of the 3 piece bung probably not. To remove the bung there's two red bits. The first you lever off but the second you actually have to push into the keg. To get it out of the keg again you tip the keg upside down when it's full of water when your cleaning it. The the red bit comes out with the cleaning water.
If the keg is full of beer getting at the second red bit would be impossible until it's empty and I'm not sure if it would infect the beer whilst it's in there

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You wouldn't need to take the bung out, just put the hops in when you put the beer in. There is a worry about grassy flavours but I'd wager that wouldn't happen...obviously I'd only try it with 1 keg first. Now that I've started thinking about it I'm going to give it a go when I next fill a keg and see how it works out.

DoctorMick said:

You wouldn't need to take the bung out, just put the hops in when you put the beer in. There is a worry about grassy flavours but I'd wager that wouldn't happen...obviously I'd only try it with 1 keg first. Now that I've started thinking about it I'm going to give it a go when I next fill a keg and see how it works out.

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I thought you meant dry hopping the MK shortly before tapping each one. Dry Hopping when I package goes back to my concern that there wouldnt be any flavour/aroma left from the dry hopping when it came to drinking the beer several weeks/months down the line. This is why I'm going for a malt focused style

MyQul said:

I thought you meant dry hopping the MK shortly before tapping each one. Dry Hopping when I package goes back to my concern that there wouldnt be any flavour/aroma left from the dry hopping when it came to drinking the beer several weeks/months down the line. This is why I'm going for a malt focused style

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In my head I think the hops being in the keg would keep the flavour and aroma topped up as it where although I have no science behind that so it's probably wrong.

DoctorMick said:

In my head I think the hops being in the keg would keep the flavour and aroma topped up as it where although I have no science behind that so it's probably wrong.

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Perhaps, I'm not sure. I think it's a good idea to have an experiment with though. I dry hop one keg and see what happens. Thanks for the idea :thumb:

I recieved my 60L FV today. It's very strudy.
I'm going to make a 23L brew next week and havervest the yeast cake so I can use it in the 55L partial

MyQul said:

Perhaps, I'm not sure. I think it's a good idea to have an experiment with though. I dry hop one keg and see what happens. Thanks for the idea :thumb:

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I put a beer into a keg a few weeks ago and completely forgot to try this! Next time...