I finally got around to doing the parti-gyle I had planned to do last November. Originally I had planned to make a porter and a mild. I have had some rye malt and flaked rye sitting around for a while now as well though. After having a rye porter by Peace Tree Brewing here in Iowa it really motivated me to get on this project again but with a rye twist. With this in mind I set out to make a rye porter and a rye pale ale.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, we'll see when it is finished) I lost count while I was weighing out the Maris Otter, so I ended up with 2 extra pounds of grain. I also got amazing efficiency from a very fine grind so the porter ended up becoming an imperial porter. This means instead of being 5-6% ABV as I planned, it will end up 8-9%. My only real worry with this is that I may not have enough hops bitterness to offset the maltiness of the beer. We'll see how it works out. This was just the first of many errors though.
This was my first brew in my mash tun in over a year. I have been doing a lot of brew-in-a-bag sessions where there is no worry about doing a sparge. I also had a very fine grind and rye malt itself tends to pack pretty tight, so the cards were stacked against me getting it to lauter or rinse effectively. The grains packed down tight forming what brewers dreadfully know as a stuck sparge. I had to dig down into the grain bed to allow for the sugary goodness to reach the drain. This is not ideal since it can cause lots of particles to pass through into the boil. Over all though I was happy with how the wort (sugary tea-like mixture that beer is made from) tasted so I pressed on.
In order to make a big dark beer and a smaller lighter colored beer from the same batch of grain, all the dark grains had to be steeped separately after I had gotten the first run off collected. I added a muslin bag with all my dark malts to the kettle with my first runnings to steep while I started the second mash for the smaller beer. I got busy with milling a few extra pounds of grain for this second run and went and just kicked the burner on full blast under my boil kettle. I forgot however that the bag of dark malts was still in the kettle. Luckily I went to stir it just before it got up to a boil. I just started thinking 'what the heck is this big thing at the bottom of my kettle?' and almost simultaneously answered, 'damn, the steeping grains are still in there!' I managed to pick the bag out and continue on without too much damage I hope, again.
Speaking of damage, I tried something I have not done since my first 2 batches. I used Coralville tap water for this batch. I will disclaim this however to say that I did boil it all first to drive off the chlorine in the water. I was worried about this enough already before I noticed a lot of precipitate falling out of the water and a bit of a hard water film that was formed by this. I decided to take Charlie Papazian's advice: Relax, don't worry, have a home brew. These are works to live by.
The boil for the big dark beer went very smoothly, and I got it started cooling with my immersion chiller as I tinkered around with my now re-stuck sparge on my second mash, so the porter was cooled to 80 degrees long before I was ready to mess with it. I put the second beer on to boil as I brought the first inside to transfer to it's fermenter. I set the kettle on the table with the carboy and funnel under the kettle's spigot, opened it up and just let it run while I went to check on the second batch on the deck. By the time I came back in the kettle was empty. I had forgotten the filter that goes into the funnel to keep all the hops and other debris from getting into the fermenter. I then had to sanitize a third fermenter and decant the five gallons off all this debris, losing about a half gallon of beer or so in the process.
The second beer's boil went better than the first even, and it was transferred to the fermenter with no issues. I did however manage to drop a hydrometer into the fermenter with the second beer, so there it will stay until the beer is done. Not a big issue, as I have a backup hydrometer, but it meant I could not shake it up to get a real good aeration on that one prior to pitching yeast. To make up for this I decided to do a quazi-open fermentation on both beers by just covering the mouth of the bottles with aluminum foil so air can move in and out, but particles won't fall in. This may end up being a mistake in itself, but so far so good. As a matter of fact, I checked them both tonight and I have a nice krausen (yeasty cake on top of the beer) on both beers.
Lots of lessons learned here, like using rice hulls if you even suspect that there may be a stuck sparge. I will say a 6 hour brew day for double the output was a very good benefit to the parti-gyle. A second beer from only 3 pound of additional grain was another huge benefit as well. I am very curious to see how these beers turn out. I am going to order an extra tag for my state fair entries just in case they do turn out good. Overall if I am doing a bigger beer, I think a parti-gyle would be a frugal opportunity for a second beer. It just takes more planning. Brew-in-a-bag still seems to be the way to go if I am just making a smaller non-lagers, for me at least.
Rye Porter:
OG:1.078
Grain/Extract/Sugar
12.00 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
1.00 lbs. Rye Malt
0.75 lbs. Crystal 20L
1.00 lbs. Flaked Rye
0.75 lbs. Special B Malt
2.00 lbs. Munich Malt(6-row)
0.50 lbs. Black Malt
0.50 lbs. Black Patent Malt
Hops
1.00 oz. Goldings - E.K. 5 min.
1.00 oz. Goldings - E.K. 40 min.
1.00 oz. Northern Brewer 60 min.
Rye Pale Ale
OG: 1.037
added 3 lbs Maris Otter
Hops
1.00 oz. Fuggle Pellet 4.00 3.3 5 min.
1.00 oz. Willamette Pellet 4.90 24.1 60 min.
