[troybinso]

I am planning on making a Smoked Porter, but I would like to make it a split batch. I can make up to 20 gallons of this beer and I would like at least 5 gallons of it to not be smoked.

I am thinking that the best way is to just make two mashes - one with 100% smoked malt and the other with the Porter grain bill. Ferment them separately and blend post fermentation. Although I suppose I could blend the unfermented wort after it is chilled.

Any advice?

[chinaski]

You could mash w/out the smoked malt, run-off whatever first runnings are needed for 5 gallons (top-off the high gravity runnings with water), then add the smoked malt to the mash & rest for a bit (20 minutes?) then run-off the rest to another kettle.  Another option is to not mash the smoked malt but steep it in your wort or mini-mash it and add that runnings to the wort.  I'm guessing the first option might a bit easier to formulate and control than the second.  Have fun with it!

[reverseapachemaster]

I would do what chinaski suggests as the first option but I would just steep the smoked malt in the sparge water that you are going to use for the smoked portion. Kai's partigyle simulator will help you figure out all the necessary volumes.

[troybinso]

Yeah, I like the parti-gyle suggestion. I hadn't thought of that. I can take some first runnings and water it down a little bit to get the right gravity and put it in a smaller kettle for 5 gallons, and then get about 15 gallons of smoked porter to go along with it.

[tschmidlin]

Sorry if this is obvious, but why not just make two 10 gallon batches, one smoked, one not?

[troybinso]

I guess I would like to use just one mash tun, and try to cut down a little bit on the time to finish the batch. Also, I only want one 5 gallon batch to be unsmoked.