Getting the most from your grains.

[Richie_asg1]

If supplies are in high demand, then we really should be getting the most out of our grains.

I've just brewed a London porter all grain, and am now setting up the day after to mash the grains a second time for longer to make the most of them. I am thinking of making up the gravity with sparaymalt, but is there a calculator for how much I need or is it just add a bit and check?

After that they will be dried, ground into flour and added to bread mixes.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Try this Lazy Chart For Converting - DME - LME -GRAIN -

 

[Slid]

If supplies are in high demand, then we really should be getting the most out of our grains.

I've just brewed a London porter all grain, and am now setting up the day after to mash the grains a second time for longer to make the most of them. I am thinking of making up the gravity with spraymalt, but is there a calculator for how much I need or is it just add a bit and check?

After that they will be dried, ground into flour and added to bread mixes.

Have done so-called parti-gyle style brews twice. As a rule of thumb, if you do not sparge the grains for gyle 1 (strong beer) then roughly one third of the sugars are left for gyle 2. If you did a sparge for the London Porter, as I suspect, there will be slim pickings indeed from a second mash. The sort of recipe list you want to add should be sufficient for a low-end strength beer. That way you may get a decent session-type beer by using the wort from the second mash instead of water.

If you search for "parti-gyle"you can pick up some more details easily enough. Before sparging became popular, this getting 2 or even 3 parti from each gyle of malt was the usual way of brewing.

 

[Druncan]

Wasn't this a traditional way of brewing with first runnings, second etc,,,, seems very sensible This seems to be similar idea; Second Runnings Batch Good luck, report back?

 

[Richie_asg1]

That's very useful as I've never really understood the term party gyle before. I'll have a look.

When I tried drying some of the grains they felt very sticky and this was after a dunk sparge, so I thought I would try it out.
It has resulted in a weak wort to start with, but with loads of colour, so will add this back to a mash with some MO base malt I have left over, and spray malt to make up the gravity.
Bit of a user-upper, and will taste it as I go along.

It's only a mini batch of 10L anyway so a bit of an experiment and no great loss if it ends up 'kin orrible.

 

[chthon]

It depends a bit on what you mean with getting the most out of.

Technically, a fly sparge is more efficiënt, you can get more sugar out of your grist than different batch sparges. And using a fly sparge for parti-gyling is not impossible, just switch from vessels somewhere halfway or even 1/3 and 2/3 of the way. This way you also have different gyles.

Additionally, step mashing helps too, and the time in between doesn't need to be hours. 20 minutes at 62°C, 20 minutes at 65° C and 20 minutes at 70°C works fairly well. Of course, it depends upon your setup. Since I at most have to warm up 8l of mash, this is simpler and faster for me than for someone who has to heat 16l of mash. I suppose that the stirring needed also improves extraction.

My extraction is mostly between 85% and 90% using these principles.

 

[Drunkula]

Guile Brews from March 12th 2020 on Basic Brewing might not help but there's a really good thing to note about using inverted sugar, its flavour and its effect on yeast about 16 minutes in. The inverted sugar needs to be balanced with more hops. This really interested me because I'm going to re-do my not-a-kit and a kilo experiment (NAKAAK) with sugar that's inverted and sugar added after cooling do doouble down on the sugar = cider myth, which so far has been busted in two experiments.

My full batch brews are still giving out about 1.020 when I finish sparging, but we're talking not that much water left so you wouldn't get that for 23 litres.

Ron Pattinson's guest spots on the BeerSmith podcast are amazing because he talks about how Watney's got more out of their ingredients. But putting the beer left in returned kegs back into the new batches. Up to 15%. So save those dregs! Yukkkkkk. It makes me laugh because he's effin and jeffin all over the shop and most of the guests don't really say things like "Most of the beer they were making was fu***ing sh*t!"

EDIT: If your beer style won't stuffer that much don't think twice about adding in 250g of sugar, that'll replace about 600g of base malt, or 0.8% abv in a 20 litre batch. I added 200g per gallon in the NAKAAK experiment and used only 1.6kg of base malt and the beer was fine. I was pretty shocked by that. It had 300g of biscuit and 150g of crystal in 23 litres/5 gallons and it seems most of the flavour came from that.

 

[An Ankoù]

Ron Pattinson's guest spots on the BeerSmith podcast are amazing because he talks about how Watney's got more out of their ingredients. But putting the beer left in returned kegs back into the new batches. Up to 15%. So save those dregs! Yukkkkkk. It makes me laugh because he's effin and jeffin all over the shop and most of the guests don't really say things like "Most of the beer they were making was fu***ing sh*t!"

When I was 16 there was little option but to drink Watney's or travel a bit further down the road and drink Whitbread. I don't think anyone would return for a second pint nowadays. Especially the "Star Light"

 

[matt76]

I did exactly this around last Christmas when I made a Red IPA, details here.

The original brew was 10-12L ish moderate strength, and my re-mashing got me another 4L similar strength beer in the end.

I think I concluded it wasn't really worth the effort, but I brew smaller batches and I also do full-volume no-sparge BIAB. If you normally do 20L then it might be more worthwhile. Conversely I do actually recommend it just to learn and expand your experience.

However, if I was making a stronger beer (like a Baltic porter) then I think I would definitely re-mash.

 

[Richie_asg1]

Well with just over 3kg of grain from the porter which had the malted grains in I ended up with about 5L of dark wort with a SG of 1.044 to start off with. Which was pretty decent if a little small.
Added to a strike water to make 12L it was down to 1.010
Added 580g of MO which was to use it up for an hour ended up with a wort at 1.025.
Added about 750g of light spraymalt to get to 1.052 at the start of the boil.
47g of Fuggles at start of boil (60 mins)
20g of EKG at 10 mins
30g of EKG at 0 mins. Flameout, chill to 30 degrees, whirlpool, rest 5 mins before transfer.

Somehow I ended up at 6.25L of wort at 1.072 - which I don't quite understand where half the liquid went.

(I'm loving my new wort refractometer!)

Liquored back with 3.7L of warm water to get 10L in the FV at 1.046 and 24°C
Pitched an S04 yeast slurry from January.
Fingers crossed.

 

[foxy]

There is actually a book called, 'Guile Brews' looking at historical brewing techniques and it also has recipes.

 

[Drunkula]

There is actually a book called, 'Guile Brews' looking at historical brewing techniques and it also has recipes.

Oh yeah. I love it if the writer went on a podcast or something. That be nice. You know, just a fantasy of mine.

 

[Drunkula]

When I was 16 there was little option but to drink Watney's or travel a bit further down the road and drink Whitbread. I don't think anyone would return for a second pint nowadays. Especially the "Star Light"

Omg - Ankou could you sort of diarise that sort of thing if you could. Basically before home brewing I came from a BOOM-BEER-DRUNK culture where I swear it's like we never even tasted beer and everything was like a race to get into a coma, but since I started brewing and listening to podcast I love the history and the experimentation so much.

In the historical podcasts they've gone on about GA (Government ale) and stuff like that, well before your time, and it's such an aspect of social history that I love hearing sadly what's happening at the moment is going to be part of that history.

Growing up I saw adverts for beers that were gone by the time I could drink and never even wondered if they were any good. Double Diamond, there was one with a cloud with a silver lining which I can't remember what it was for. "Goodbye EEEEEE."

I've just googled old uk beer adverts. Love it if anyone could chip in on their experience with these

Tartan bitter:
John Bull (thought it was beer kit brand) :
Carrington (never heard of it) :



I love all this stuff so much.

Were the beers actually good back then or for once have things got better? Do a new thread if this it too hijack.

 

[An Ankoù]

Omg - Ankou could you sort of diarise that sort of thing if you could. Basically before home brewing I came from a BOOM-BEER-DRUNK culture where I swear it's like we never even tasted beer and everything was like a race to get into a coma, but since I started brewing and listening to podcast I love the history and the experimentation so much.

In the historical podcasts they've gone on about GA (Government ale) and stuff like that, well before your time, and it's such an aspect of social history that I love hearing sadly what's happening at the moment is going to be part of that history.

Growing up I saw adverts for beers that were gone by the time I could drink and never even wondered if they were any good. Double Diamond, there was one with a cloud with a silver lining which I can't remember what it was for. "Goodbye EEEEEE."

I've just googled old uk beer adverts. Love it if anyone could chip in on their experience with these

Tartan bitter:
John Bull (thought it was beer kit brand) :
Carrington (never heard of it) :



I love all this stuff so much.

Were the beers actually good back then or for once have things got better? Do a new thread if this it too hijack.

I love the old beer adverts, too. "How do you do it Stanley? It's Tankard that makes me excell. After one I do anything well" etc, etc. Didn't know about the podcasts, though. Could you give us a link?
The beer was pretty awful at the time. People didn't ask for a "light and bitter" or a "brown and mild" or a "boilermaker" for nothing! They used to mix it or mix draft with bottled to give it a bit of flavour. No wonder lager enjoyed the success it did. there were some notable exceptions and I have an abiding memory of drinking a couple of pints of Whitbread (must have been cask) in North Devon that were absolutely gorgeous. Hence my recent experiments with old Whitbread recipes. The takeaway of the time was a Party 7 or a Party 4 of Watney's Bitter. The trick was to drink as much of it as you could as quickly as you could hoping not to taste anything until you were comfortably numb (thanks to Pink Floyd or was it the Scissor Sisters). The beer was very weak, too. The abv wasn't marked only the OG, but I doubt it reached 4% abv. To get a 5%, which is about standard today, would be exceptional and you'd be pisssed in no time as we were all used to drinking by the gallon rather than the pint.

 

[Richie_asg1]

I would start a new thread for the Beer adds because a lot of folks would chip in on that, and could be hard to find in here.
Just copy the posts over or maybe chippy could sort it all out. thumb

 

[chthon]

@An Ankoù : You should probably be good friends with Ronald Pattinson and Martyn Cornell!

 

[An Ankoù]

@An Ankoù : You should probably be good friends with Ronald Pattinson and Martyn Cornell!

I love reading and re-reading Cornell and every time I dip into Pattinson I'm amused by his written style. Somewhere, he says, he missed his regular blog because he was "fiddling in the knickers of some other projects". Such Imagery!

 

[Sadfield]

The trick often missed by homebrewers when partigyling, is to collect two worts and ferment them as they are, often accepting a less than ideal second beer. The missing part is to blend those two worts into two or more beers of a desired gravity. For example, Fullers boil then combine two runnings at 1.080 and 1.020 into the wort for ESB, London Pride and Chiswick Bitter at 1.055, 1.040 and 1.034 respectively. Getting the most out one mash.

 

[Gingerbrews]

Ads were great, beer not so

 

[Cheshire Cat]

When I was a lad in the late 60's every pub in my home town of Northwich sold Greenall Whitley beers brewed in Warrington. They also made Vladivar Vodka. The beer was disgusting but also a lot of pub landlords didn't know how to keep beer. So we went into the Cheshire countryside for a pint of Tetleys or Double Diamond. Yuk