The London Pride / ESB partigyle rabbit hole

[Sadfield]

From the comments section of the early Beervana article. It appears results were variable even with the same recipe.

I once sat in on the brewers' tasting panel at Fullers. One of the batches of London Pride being tasted was out of spec - too many IBUs - because it had been parti-gyled with Vintage Ale. - Ron Pattinson.


John Keeling once used a haircut to describe the variability of Pride to me. You recognize it as the same beer, just as when your friend gets a haircut, but it’s not always a perfectly consistent beer. That was a feature rather than a big as he saw it. I agree. - Jeff Alworth.

 

[matt76]

From the comments section of the early Beervana article. It appears results were variable even with the same recipe.

I once sat in on the brewers' tasting panel at Fullers. One of the batches of London Pride being tasted was out of spec - too many IBUs - because it had been parti-gyled with Vintage Ale. - Ron Pattinson.


John Keeling once used a haircut to describe the variability of Pride to me. You recognize it as the same beer, just as when your friend gets a haircut, but it’s not always a perfectly consistent beer. That was a feature rather than a big as he saw it. I agree. - Jeff Alworth.

I know we tend to view Americans and their impressions of British beer with some scepticism, but the second "Can You Brew It" podcast is worth a listen in this regard.

At the first attempt they agreed not cloned, but for one thing the brewer didn't even use the right ingredients. At the second attempt, with the right ingredients, partigyle and right fermentation schedule they voted cloned. It comes across to me that Jamil really cares about the uniqueness of British styles, and preserving these quirky brewing techniques. Initially Tasty said not cloned but he was comparing the homebrew with a pateurised bottled version - when they compared with unpasteurised samples brought by one of their guys direct from Fuller's they agreed it was a clone.

Jamil went on to remark that if they submitted the homebrew version to a competition it might get some negative feedback because American judges would be used to imported pasteurised versions that have degraded somewhat during the shipping process.

 

[peebee]

Yes there was, it was released a couple of years before.

Ooo! The date I had was 1975. But I can't remember where I got that date from, so into the scrap bucket it goes! Thanks

...

Oh aye:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maris_Otter(And everyone else too; where did that 1975 come from? ... I do have a dodgy imagination, that'll be it).

 

[peebee]

FWIW, and I know you like your heritage/historic recipes and malts, the head brewer in the 2010 podcast said they don't stick to one malt supplier but use about 4 as and when needed, but might blend malt from 2 of them at a time.

Yes, but it'll be a futile hunt trying to dig out others. But after @Northern_Brewer's correction to my rambling, you have got No.19 Maris Otter in the ratings now. I'm sure they were malting different early on (hence No.19 option) and the difference in malts may have more to do with malting than variety of barley. But that's my dodgy hunch, and I've already been found wanting on dates.

 

[foxy]

Ooo! The date I had was 1975. But I can't remember where I got that date from, so into the scrap bucket it goes! Thanks

...

Oh aye:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maris_Otter(And everyone else too; where did that 1975 come from? ... I do have a dodgy imagination, that'll be it).

Depends on when you read it peebee they update those Wikipedia pages constantly. The biggest problem with Maris Otter is the yield. (agronomics)

 

[Twostage]

Finally got round to digging out my notes. Sod's law, started at the back of the file and the notes were nearly at the front .

Anyway, looks like I used 7.8Kg of grain to make 10 litres of barleywine and 20 litres of ESB. The volumes are from the brewsheet printout and may not be accurate, can't think I wanted 10 litres of barleywine. I used what I've called the first and second runnings to make the barleywine (which I diluted back to 1.095 ). As this was BIAB I assume I've drained off the boiler for the 1st runnings and then sparged/squeezed for the second. I've then used the 3rd runnings (another sparge and squeeze) for the ESB. The OG of the ESB was 1.040 and I added some Jaggery goor to take it to 1.050.

Interestingly I used a combination of S04 and S33 yeasts for the barleywine .

 

[matt76]

I've been having fun playing with the Braukaiser Party [sic] Gyle and Batch Sparge Simulator* - I've been plugging in various numbers from various recent and much older brews, including a couple of times where I re-used the spent grains to try making a second beer. I also tried putting in the partigyle recipe on BYO linked above by @foxy

Along the way I've learned a few things, not least that I strongly suspect some of my earlier beers were a very long way from 100% mash conversion efficiency (not to be confused with brewhouse efficiency!)!

Looking into the calculations behind the scenes I'm inclined to put more faith in this than trying to extrapolate with my own rough calculations. But I still need more data as I suspect for a bigger than normal grain bill and shorter than normal (for me) 60min mash will result in <100% mash conversion efficiency.

But I have a plan.....

My CML order arrived earlier with most of the hops I need for this (Northdown which was out of stock). But it also included some American hops for the Black IPA I plan to brew next. But rather than brew it to my normal 4.5%-ish session strength I can chuck in an extra kilo of base malt and make it more like 6%-ish - it'll still be about 1kg short of the 4kg or so I expect to put into the partigyle but it's at least a step in the right direction.

However the pre-boil gravity turns out, it'll give me some more numbers I can plug into the Braukaiser simulator. Plus I can have my tea urn primed and ready to go and drop the grain bag into some water there once the main mash has finished. I can leave that mashing while I carry on brewing the main beer and check the gravity once I'm done. I don't need to finish brewing the small beer or partigyle it, I can just dump it once I'm done, but it will give me some data for the smaller beer/second runnings, which is where I'm most in the dark.

 

[foxy]

I've been having fun playing with the Braukaiser Party [sic] Gyle and Batch Sparge Simulator* - I've been plugging in various numbers from various recent and much older brews, including a couple of times where I re-used the spent grains to try making a second beer. I also tried putting in the partigyle recipe on BYO linked above by @foxy

Along the way I've learned a few things, not least that I strongly suspect some of my earlier beers were a very long way from 100% mash conversion efficiency (not to be confused with brewhouse efficiency!)!

Looking into the calculations behind the scenes I'm inclined to put more faith in this than trying to extrapolate with my own rough calculations. But I still need more data as I suspect for a bigger than normal grain bill and shorter than normal (for me) 60min mash will result in <100% mash conversion efficiency.

But I have a plan.....

My CML order arrived earlier with most of the hops I need for this (Northdown which was out of stock). But it also included some American hops for the Black IPA I plan to brew next. But rather than brew it to my normal 4.5%-ish session strength I can chuck in an extra kilo of base malt and make it more like 6%-ish - it'll still be about 1kg short of the 4kg or so I expect to put into the partigyle but it's at least a step in the right direction.

However the pre-boil gravity turns out, it'll give me some more numbers I can plug into the Braukaiser simulator. Plus I can have my tea urn primed and ready to go and drop the grain bag into some water there once the main mash has finished. I can leave that mashing while I carry on brewing the main beer and check the gravity once I'm done. I don't need to finish brewing the small beer or partigyle it, I can just dump it once I'm done, but it will give me some data for the smaller beer/second runnings, which is where I'm most in the dark.

Are they crushing the grains fine for brew in a bag?

 

[matt76]

Are they crushing the grains fine for brew in a bag?

Sorry mate, not following you - is *who* crushing the grains fine? You mean in that BYO article? Nope, having read through it, it seemed like a very traditional 2V or 3V setup.

But IIRC their numbers lined up pretty well with the Braukaiser calculator without any special effort which surprised me but there it is.

I do BIAB but I buy my grains crushed, so no special crush for me either.

 

[foxy]

Sorry mate, not following you - is *who* crushing the grains fine? You mean in that BYO article? Nope, having read through it, it seemed like a very traditional 2V or 3V setup.

But IIRC their numbers lined up pretty well with the Braukaiser calculator without any special effort which surprised me but there it is.

I do BIAB but I buy my grains crushed, so no special crush for me either.

'They' the people crushing the grains for you, if you informed them you were brewing in a bag wouldn't they crush the grains finer? You need to get good conversion on the initial mash so there will be plenty of sugar left for the second mash.
The starch in every grain is going to have to be accessible to the enzymes for the conversion, uncrushed grain gives about 30% efficiency. If 10% of grains have gone through the mill without getting cracked you are already behind the eight-ball. Kai does talk about crush in one of his blogs.

 

[matt76]

'They' the people crushing the grains for you, if you informed them you were brewing in a bag wouldn't they crush the grains finer? You need to get good conversion on the initial mash so there will be plenty of sugar left for the second mash.
The starch in every grain is going to have to be accessible to the enzymes for the conversion, uncrushed grain gives about 30% efficiency. If 10% of grains have gone through the mill without getting cracked you are already behind the eight-ball. Kai does talk about crush in one of his blogs.

Ah, ok, I'm with you now.

Unfortunately my LHBS doesn't offer that service (to be fair I've never asked) I just pick up a bag of x grams of whichever malt when I go in.

(They do sell uncrushed but I've never felt the need to go down that route)

Using Kai's/Braukaiser's formulae I know my mash conversion efficiency is 100% or damn close - but I normally mash for 2-3hrs min, and mostly overnight lately.

So my suspicion is if I do a "mere" 60min mash my efficiency will drop - well, actually I know it will which is one reason why I started mashing longer.

But I don't have a great feel for how much it will drop - most likely not a huge amount, but being an analytical type I obsess over these numbers! So anyway, a bit of experimentation is planned...

You need to get good conversion on the initial mash so there will be plenty of sugar left for the second mash.

But surely the whole point of partigyling is that we know we're generally leaving some sugar behind? If we converted *and extracted* all the sugar in mash 1 there'd be none left for mash 2???

Indeed, my tests with the BK simulator seem to back this up - if I take the results of one of my normal long mashes there is very little left for mash 2.

 

[Sadfield]

Does it really matter when blending the two worts with each other to hit chosen gravities? Diluting the stronger wort with as much of the weaker wort as required. If short, add extra water. You'll always have the correct gravity, but the volume may be less.

In that respect, leaving very little in the second mash isn't a problem. Fuller's second mash gravity is only 1.005

 

[foxy]

Ah, ok, I'm with you now.

Unfortunately my LHBS doesn't offer that service (to be fair I've never asked) I just pick up a bag of x grams of whichever malt when I go in.

(They do sell uncrushed but I've never felt the need to go down that route)

Using Kai's/Braukaiser's formulae I know my mash conversion efficiency is 100% or damn close - but I normally mash for 2-3hrs min, and mostly overnight lately.

So my suspicion is if I do a "mere" 60min mash my efficiency will drop - well, actually I know it will which is one reason why I started mashing longer.

But I don't have a great feel for how much it will drop - most likely not a huge amount, but being an analytical type I obsess over these numbers! So anyway, a bit of experimentation is planned...


But surely the whole point of partigyling is that we know we're generally leaving some sugar behind? If we converted *and extracted* all the sugar in mash 1 there'd be none left for mash 2???

Indeed, my tests with the BK simulator seem to back this up - if I take the results of one of my normal long mashes there is very little left for mash 2.

OK, let's say you do get close to 100% conversion, that will translate to, in my opinion, 60% efficiency going into the kettle. I am going with 60% over 60 minutes because I don't know your grain crush, I get 65% efficiency minimum in the mash I get more with a double pass.
So if you do get 60% efficiency on Gyle 1 then you will struggle to get 32% with Gyle 2.
Would be worth asking your grain provider to give you a tighter crush as you are BIAB or get a grain mill and be in full control.

You are right a longer mash does increase the conversion but leads to other problems.

Kai's Blog.

Time​

The longer the enzymes can work, the more they can convert. Hence a longer mash time can lead to an increase in conversion efficiency. But if the mash already fully converts before the rest time is over, an increase in the rest time will not have an effect on the conversion efficiency since there is nothing left to be made soluble by the enzymes. But the attenuation of the beer may still be affected by mashing longer than it takes to reach full conversion.

This assumes that the temperature is low enough and doesn't cause excessive denaturation of the enzymes (at least for the alpha amylase). If the rest temperature causes too many enzymes to be denatured before full conversion was reached, no increase in the length of that rest will be able to fix the conversion problem. Only the addition of fresh malt or enzyme preparations can convert the mash now.

Malt Milling​

How tight the malt has been crushed can have a big impact on the conversion efficiency. If the grits are to coarse and pieces of endosperm are still (partially) enclosed by the husks, the mash needs to be more intense to reach the starch inside these grits. As a result the conversion efficiency is likely to suffer. As the crush gets tighter, the size of the endosperm pieces (grits) is reduced and more of them are separated from the husks. The amount of flour also increases. There will be a point at which the largest pieces are small enough that the intensity of the chosen mashing schedule is strong enough to reach and convert all the starch. Non stirred single infusion mashes are least intense. The "intensity" is increased if a step mash is used, the mash is stirred or even boiled as it is the case for decoction and cereal mashes.

Note that the malt grain is about 1.8 mm (70 mil) thick. If it is crushed with a mill gap spacing of 1.0 - 1.5 mm (40 - 60 mil), which is the factory setting of many mills, it cannot be expected that there will be a sufficient separation between the endosperm and the husks and small enough grits that a single infusion mash is strong enough to reach all the starch. As a result many home brewers see a jump in efficiency when they start milling the grain through a tighter roller spacing or double crushing the grain.

When using a lauter tun to separate sweet wort and spent grain, there is a lower limit to the roller spacing. As the malt is crushed ever tighter the husks are shredded more and more (although that can be mitigated though Malt Conditioning) and more flour is produced. Both impede the lauter process and a stuck sparge becomes more likely. If even a mill gap spacing as low as 0.6 mm (24 mil) doesn't achieve an conversion efficiency close to 100%, attention should be paid to the other mash parameters. Most likely one or more other mash parameters are suboptimal and reduce the "strength" of the mash.

In general it is best to crush as tight as necessary for close to 100% conversion efficiency (full conversion) but not tighter as to improve the run-off speed of the lauter and avoid excessive husk shredding.

 

[matt76]

Does it really matter when blending the two worts with each other to hit chosen gravities? Diluting the stronger wort with as much of the weaker wort as required. If short, add extra water. You'll always have the correct gravity, but the volume may be less.

In that respect, leaving very little in the second mash isn't a problem. Fuller's second mash gravity is only 1.005

I agree with you 99%. Well you're probably 100% correct, the remaining 1% is the product of my own obsession and paranoia

The question is how big the first runnings will be. I think it wants to be about 1.080 BG, and I'm reasonably confident it'll be there or thereabouts. That gives me plenty to work with.

If it's only, say, 1.060 BG for example - well I could still work with that but like you say, volumes will suffer. Not a disaster, but you want to get a decent yield to make it more worth the effort don't you.

Just a case of working out some contingencies in Excel - hope for the best, plan for the worst. I'm sure I could wing it on the day, I feel like I've enough experience that I could manage, but my nature is simply I like to have thought it through first where possible. Nevertheless, I still expect some improvisation will be needed!

 

[Sadfield]

The question is how big the first runnings will be. I think it wants to be about 1.080 BG, and I'm reasonably confident it'll be there or thereabouts. That gives me plenty to work with.

From the Braukaiser table, the first runnings should be 1.080 if you mash in at 3.2L/kg. The second runnings from the mash will be what varies with lautering. That's how I read it.

 

[matt76]

From the Braukaiser table, the first runnings should be 1.080 if you mash in at 3.2L/kg. The second runnings from the mash will be what varies with lautering. That's how I read it.

Yep, that's consistent with (a) the BK simulator spreadsheet, and (b) extrapolating from my own normal brewing experience to date

And for the second runnings, yeah, they'll be what they'll be. I'm inclined to put some faith in the BK spreadsheet, plus experiment on my next brew day to check it.

But as long as the first runnings are reasonably strong that'll give me plenty of wiggle room.

 

[matt76]

Having slept on it and mulled it over a bit more I'm not sure I need to bother doing a semi-test run with my next brew, I think I'm more inclined to wing it on the day - I've done enough calculations and I'm comfortable enough I should be somewhere in the ballpark and end up with two worts I can work with.

But one thing that's still puzzling me is the hops - the additions posted by Fuller's from their brew log on Twitter seem tiny! In total they have 121kg hops going in on the hot side (ESB & Chiswick Bitter are also dry hopped later on) - sounds a lot but that's versus a 15950kg grain bill or 1183HL water going in or 1040HL wort going into the fermenters.

A recent bitter I made (and have made before) wasn't overly hoppy or bitter but I used 80g hops (20g of that in the whirlpool) for a 2250g grain bill, 15L water and about 12L in the FV.

However I slice it and dice it the ratio of hops to other ingredients seems tiny compared to my own experience. Even if I halved the hops in my recipe above it's still way more than Fuller's use.

Admittedly I tend to be heavy handed with the hops, and I do struggle to show restraint when I'm making a bitter or similar, but even so I can't fathom it. When I put these numbers into Brewer's Friend the IBU's come out way below anything I've seen published or even a ballpark for what you might expect for these styles.

I'm sure Fuller's know a lot more than I do about making beer so what am I missing? Would brewing on such an industrial scale suddenly mean your hops go a lot further, or could they be using special "magic" hops only available to professionals???

 

[Twostage]

Having slept on it and mulled it over a bit more I'm not sure I need to bother doing a semi-test run with my next brew, I think I'm more inclined to wing it on the day - I've done enough calculations and I'm comfortable enough I should be somewhere in the ballpark and end up with two worts I can work with.

But one thing that's still puzzling me is the hops - the additions posted by Fuller's from their brew log on Twitter seem tiny! In total they have 121kg hops going in on the hot side (ESB & Chiswick Bitter are also dry hopped later on) - sounds a lot but that's versus a 15950kg grain bill or 1183HL water going in or 1040HL wort going into the fermenters.

A recent bitter I made (and have made before) wasn't overly hoppy or bitter but I used 80g hops (20g of that in the whirlpool) for a 2250g grain bill, 15L water and about 12L in the FV.

However I slice it and dice it the ratio of hops to other ingredients seems tiny compared to my own experience. Even if I halved the hops in my recipe above it's still way more than Fuller's use.

Admittedly I tend to be heavy handed with the hops, and I do struggle to show restraint when I'm making a bitter or similar, but even so I can't fathom it. When I put these numbers into Brewer's Friend the IBU's come out way below anything I've seen published or even a ballpark for what you might expect for these styles.

I'm sure Fuller's know a lot more than I do about making beer so what am I missing? Would brewing on such an industrial scale suddenly mean your hops go a lot further, or could they be using special "magic" hops only available to professionals???

It could be that hop extraction is better at bigger volumes (although I'm sure I've just read it is the other way around).

Anyway, back of a fag packet calculation - my latest brew had 4kg of malt. Multiplying their 121kg of hops by 4/16000 (their grist KG) gives 30g which is exactly the amount of kettle hops I used. I know its a different recipe but maybe their numbers are not wildly out of kilter.

 

[matt76]

It could be that hop extraction is better at bigger volumes (although I'm sure I've just read it is the other way around).

Anyway, back of a fag packet calculation - my latest brew had 4kg of malt. Multiplying their 121kg of hops by 4/16000 (their grist KG) gives 30g which is exactly the amount of kettle hops I used. I know its a different recipe but maybe their numbers are not wildly out of kilter.

Hmm, OK, that's interesting. Like I say, I know I'm heavy handed with the hops.

Out of interest, what were you brewing? And when you say "kettle hops" you mean throughout the boil right, not just the initial bittering addition?

 

[Twostage]

Hmm, OK, that's interesting. Like I say, I know I'm heavy handed with the hops.

Out of interest, what were you brewing? And when you say "kettle hops" you mean throughout the boil right, not just the initial bittering addition?

Not sure what to call what I was making apart from a SMASH. 100% Vienna and 30g Chinook first wort hopped. I did a 20g whirlpool at the end. I'm tasting a bottle tonight I'll post something.

(I made a Helles with only first wort hops and it was amazing how the hop flavour carried through so I'm experimenting with doing it in other brews)