Sun Jun 07, 2009 5:07 am
A partial mash is your next step in brewing.
Do you do any steeping of grains now? When you're doing that, your getting lots of good stuff out of the grains and it's a big improvement over using just liquid extract or dried extract. The problem is that there are some grains that won't give you what you need by steeping. That's where the partial mash comes in.
Equipment you need:
2 pots.
Grain bag.
Thermometer.
Concepts needed:
"Mashing"
"Sparging"
In a nutshell, "mashing" is the process of letting grains sit in a body of water to break down the straches in the grain, and convert that into the yummy sugars your beer needs. After you mash your grains, you then do a process known as "sparging". Now, sparging is nothing more than running hot water over the mashed grains to wash out all the sugars you created.
It sounds tough, but bear with me. It'll be easy.
Let's say we're going to make a nice Witbeer, similar to Blue Moon. Your beer is going to be better. Now, I haven't done an extract batch in a while, so if someone wants to tweak this one, be my guest. I would do the following.
Can of pilsner (or similar light color. The lightest you can find) extract.
4 lbs of wheat malt.
1/2 lb Munich malt
1/4 lb Flaked oats.
2 oz Kent Goldings hops.
4 oranges.
1 oz coriander.
Here's the fun part. Grab the kettle you've been making your extract batches with. This is going to act very similar to what all grain brewers call the "mash tun". Add your water. How much water? Well, a good rule of thumb is about 1/2 gallons of water for every pound of grain you have. Here we have about 4.5 pounds, so let's say about 2 and a half gallons of water. Bring this water to a temprature of 175 degrees or so. You see, grains have a magic temperature range where the conversion works best.
Now put the ground up wheat malt, oats, and munich malt into a grain bag. (btw, ask the folks at your local homebrew shop for help if you're not 100% sure of what you're doing. They're always happy to help!) I recommend elevating the bag slightly off the bottom of the pan with a piece of string. I found that this helped to keep the grains from being caramelized by the heat of the kettle.
Now, you're going to want to submerge the grain bag. Stir the pot up a bit. Take a temp reading. You want the mash to be at about 150-153. If too low, turn up the heat. If too high, toss in some cold water. Keep your water at that magic 150 degrees at all time!
Now sit back and have a beer. Those grains are going to have to sit for about an hour. This will give you time to get set up for stage 2. The sparge.
This is why you need another pot. In the second pot you're going want to have about 3.5-4 gallons of water. Bring this water up to about 180-190.
Now the time has come to sparge. Lift the grain bag out of the water, but still over the first kettle. Slowly (some folks use a pitcher) pour the sparge water over the grain bag. Get all those sugars out. Congrats, brutha! You just made your first all grain wort! Pour yourself another beer.
Ditch those grains, add your extract and brew as you have always brewed.
1 oz of the hops will be for bittering (60 minute addition) and the other for aroma (end of boil). When you kill the heat, zest in the rinds of the oranges and add the coriander.
For yeast I recommend White Labs WLP400 or Wyeast 3944.
Enjoy the best damn wit beer out there, and give the rest of your stock of blue moon to a homeless guy. You won't drink the stuff again after making your own.
Bob "G. Bob" Roland
Nickel City Brewing
