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Reading a book about IPA's goes lightly into the past and mentions how many, many moons ago people would brew up 4 batches using the same grains and starting with a higher mash temp and each time reducing it a bit. They made an old ale that was aged for 2-3 years all the way down to a table beer (2-3% ABV) which was drank by everyone.

Has anyone done this? Every time, now, that I'm done with my grains and about to toss them I think about trying just one additional mash to see how it turns out.
 
Never read on a home brew forum about anyone doing this. Maybe because we have 'better' grain nowadays (by better I mean I was reading a forum post somewhere about how the starch is better/easier converted to sugars - someone with more knowledge than me help me out here) and also grain would be a lot more cheaper now due to our industrial farming techniques, so there's no need to use it more than once.

Interesting though Why don't you ask on a couple of other forums,you might get a better response. But why mash at a increasingly lower mash temp? All that happens is you get a drier beer, dont you?
 
Sounds interesting...

I would have thought with modern MT you'd be extracting most of the fermentable sugars from the grain during mashing. Especially with sparging, which you'd typically do until your run off reads like water on the hydrometer.

I can only assume that in the past the science of mashing wasn't so well understood and the mash efficiency was very low. Allowing multiple batches from one lot of grain, whereas today everything is done to extract everything of value from the grain in one go.

It'd be a interesting concept to investigate though, you'd do no harm mashing your spent grain just to check see if you can extract anything at different temperatures. My worry here would be extracting none fermentable sugars.. resulting in a sweet low abv beer??

I'd approach it by looking to reduce my mash efficiency, run a batch without sparging.. then see how many worth while batches you could get out of one set of grain. You could check your mash run off each time to see how much you've extracted each time.

Give it and go and report back :cheers:
 
Of course people do....

Search Party Gyling....

You can easily get two nice beers out of one gift of grains if you start with an barley-wine strenght gift (OG 1.100 or higher) maybe even three.
Remember though that you will have to have two kettles, two worts to boil, two worts to chill, two fermenters to sanitise...

But start with grain gift for a nice pale barleywine 90% maris otter and 10% light cara then calculate it so that you don't need to sparge. And use your sparge to make a second beer of lesser strenght and treat it as a nice light IPA or a good blonde. Try it... It will work, if you've got the room and the patience for it.
 
Patience? Yes. Equipment? No.

But I do have a lot of curiosity!

I hadn't considered that today's grains seem to convert easier and more fully. One would likely be hard pressed to get more than an additional beer if sparging.

It wasn't clear on why the mash temp was lowered with each additional mash, but I'd assume it was due to having mashed previously, and therefor attempting to get a little more each time. And the last beer (table beer) wasn't really looking for alcohol per se as it was meant just for a safe alternative to poor water. It didn't say whether or not it was hopped, and I'm a bit curious about that too. But not curious enough to do it for more than just a couple of beers.
 
if oyu make an imperial stout out of a high grain recipe you can doe a 2nd or 3rd sparge of the grainds to get lower gravity beers, no reason why you cant do it with any style, IPA Pilsner Bitters etc
 
Why not just chuck a beer kit into the second running?
 
Am currently reading a book about porters and stouts. The first part of the book is a history of the beer type.

It seems that the biggest reason why people did two, three or even four mashes from one lot of grain is that back then sparging hadn't been invented
 
In the book I have it didn't get into detail about this, but it's what makes sense. With a good sparge I don't see how you could get much more than a table beer (<3% ABV) with one more mash.
 
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