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Author Topic: Extract to Partial?  (Read 3057 times)

Offline duboman

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Extract to Partial?
« on: August 17, 2011, 02:42:01 pm »
The training wheels are off and I am moving towards Partial Mash but have a few questions:

1. Is there a general calculation that can be used to convert existing Extract recipes to Partial Mash? I am assuming the quantity of specialty grains would remain the same but the base malt amount would replace the LME amount? I ask because we have some great recipes that have produced great beer and we would like to duplicate them as Partial Mash. If not, is there an easy way to convert an all grain to partial mash?

2. I understand that when mashing we are to use about 1qt of water per pound of grain at about 155 degrees. It is my understanding the sparge water should be about the same ratio at 170 so when added the temp drops accordingly. Is this correct? To follow, I am wondering if it is okay to use a larger volume of sparge water to eliminate having to "top-off" the brew kettle as we still want to do full boils.

3. In lieu of using LME would we achieve a more true color by only selecting DME and would the amount remain the same. It seems that all of our extract beers are slightly darker because of the heavy use of LME in the recipes

4. Is 60-90 minutes a general time for mashing the grains assuming we are looking at around 4lbs of base malt? Is using a few drops of iodine in a sample the best way to tell if the mash is complete?

5. Is it important to monitor the rate of flow into the brew kettle when sparging? I am planning on using a 5gal. Beverage cooler with a 5/8th hose. Is it important to not drain the cooler too quickly?

6. When calculating the recipes do I need to be concerned with the amounts of hops or would they generally remain the same.

I appreciate all your input and looking forward to taking the next step.
Peace....Love......Beer......

The Commune Brewing Company-Perfecting the craft of beer since 2010

Offline tschmidlin

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Re: Extract to Partial?
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2011, 10:20:29 pm »
1.  Essentially yes, you just swap out some of the base extract for malt.  If you have no idea of your efficiency, you can just take a guess at 75%, figure out how many points that will give you, and remove that much extract.  When you're brewing, you can just add extract if your gravity is too low.

2.  I'd recommend batch sparging - see dennybrew.com for a detailed explanation.

3.  I don't know what you mean by "true color", but DME should make for a lighter beer than LME.

4.  Yes, 60-90 minutes is the right amount of time to mash for good conversion.  Iodine is next to useless, don't bother with it.

5.  Not if you batch sparge.

6.  If you have been doing full boils already, there is no need to adjust the amount of hops.
Tom Schmidlin

Offline duboman

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Re: Extract to Partial?
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2011, 06:00:50 am »
1.  Essentially yes, you just swap out some of the base extract for malt.  If you have no idea of your efficiency, you can just take a guess at 75%, figure out how many points that will give you, and remove that much extract.  When you're brewing, you can just add extract if your gravity is too low.

2.  I'd recommend batch sparging - see dennybrew.com for a detailed explanation.

3.  I don't know what you mean by "true color", but DME should make for a lighter beer than LME.

4.  Yes, 60-90 minutes is the right amount of time to mash for good conversion.  Iodine is next to useless, don't bother with it.

5.  Not if you batch sparge.

Thanks for the reply and the additional resource!

6.  If you have been doing full boils already, there is no need to adjust the amount of hops.
Peace....Love......Beer......

The Commune Brewing Company-Perfecting the craft of beer since 2010

Offline duboman

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Re: Extract to Partial?
« Reply #3 on: September 23, 2011, 07:14:04 am »
The first partial mash is just about ready to bottle this weekend. Had some issues with low gravity. I have been told it's probably an efficiency issue. Just picked up Brewsmith and the efficiency rating came out at a paltry 61%, gravilty was about 4-5 points off.

We followed all single infusion mash procedures and batch sparged. I know there are a lot of details I am not providing but are there any general rules of thumb I should be looking at to improve efficiency without having to provide every step by step detail, temps, etc?
Peace....Love......Beer......

The Commune Brewing Company-Perfecting the craft of beer since 2010

Offline Hokerer

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Re: Extract to Partial?
« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2011, 07:24:32 am »
We followed all single infusion mash procedures and batch sparged. I know there are a lot of details I am not providing but are there any general rules of thumb I should be looking at to improve efficiency without having to provide every step by step detail, temps, etc?

Probably the biggest factor in efficiency is the crush of the grain.  Yours probably isn't crushed fine enough so, if you can figure a way to crush more, you'd have the best chance of improving efficiency.
Joe

Offline kramerog

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Re: Extract to Partial?
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2011, 08:54:03 pm »
We followed all single infusion mash procedures and batch sparged. I know there are a lot of details I am not providing but are there any general rules of thumb I should be looking at to improve efficiency without having to provide every step by step detail, temps, etc?

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Understanding_Efficiency has a good discussion of how to figure out where you are losing efficiency.  Did you check pH? 5.2-5.8 is the optimal range.

Also you should be using 1.25 qt/lb as a minimum for mashes generally.