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Author Topic: Partigyle questions, should I cap?  (Read 1557 times)

Offline nateo

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Partigyle questions, should I cap?
« on: August 25, 2011, 05:09:11 pm »
I've been reading about partigyle brewing, and I intend to do an imperial/regular pseudo-schwarzbier with that method. I've read that some people add different grains at sparging to darken or otherwise change the flavor of the second runnings.

I was planning on making 3 recipes on Beersmith, one with the total grain bill (to figure out mash temps and such), and one assuming 60% of the grist will go towards the big beer, and one assuming 40% goes towards the small beer. Will Beersmith accurately predict the color if I do it this way?

If the color and gravity on the small beer are where I want it to be, should I add grains? I gathered from my reading that the small beer will be lacking, which is why people add additional grains and the sparge. Can someone with some experience doing this verify that?
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Offline denny

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Re: Partigyle questions, should I cap?
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2011, 05:55:56 pm »
I find that the second runnings beer can sometimes be a bit thin so I often add some crystal to counteract that.  I'm no sure that will be an issue of you're going to make a schwarz as the 2nd beer, though.  You could just have some Sinamar on hand to correct color of necessary.  AFAIK, Sinamar was created to color schwarz.
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Offline bluesman

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Re: Partigyle questions, should I cap?
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2011, 06:08:17 pm »
You can always opt to kick it up a notch with some extract (liquid or DME). Sinemar is a fine choice and if it's not readily available you can always add more grain after your first runoff. Just keep track of your pH(<6.0)
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Offline nateo

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Re: Partigyle questions, should I cap?
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2011, 06:13:49 pm »
Thanks Denny and bluesman! I have a pH meter and am pretty anal about checking my runoff pH.

I have another question that came up after I punched everything into Beersmith. I was basing my recipe on Tom O's partigyle calculator, and Kai's partigyle mash thickness table. If you don't have it in front of you, it assumes a 60/40 split of the grains' gravity and color contribution and 3.5L/kg to hit my target first running gravity and volume. The issue is, my mash tun is not nearly big enough to hold all the grain and water at the required thickness.

Should I try to figure out all the gravities from a first, second and third runnings, or should I just do it on-the-fly on brewday? On my sub-recipes for the individual beers I have pre-boil gravities and volumes. Would I be able to just measure my volume and gravity as I mix the 3 runnings to get to where I want to be?

The confusing thing to me is that my "master" recipe with all the grain as one recipe gives me a pre-boil volume of 52L, but each sub-recipe gives me a pre-boil volume of 31L, so I would actually need 11L more than Beersmith tells me. Is this something to do with the way Beersmith calculates boil-off?

I'm not super particular about hitting my numbers exactly, but to be off by 11L seems like a lot.

EDIT: I think I figured out the volume issue. I found a set volume for "lost to trub and chiller" of 3.79, so it was double counting that volume, and also it had a set boil-off volume. When I fixed both of those the numbers matched up.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2011, 08:49:23 pm by nateo »
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