Parti-gyle Mild

[nallum]

I brewed a very strong bitter/barley wine yesterday without rinsing the grain bed and decided to do a parti-gyle Mild. Just for fun and try some new Fuggle hops. And something to pull through my dry beer engine in a few weeks.

I got about 13L SG 1.029 and diluted with 2L water to get my pre-boil half-batch volume.

Weighed post-mash salts and forgot to add them. 🥴

The speciality malts were steeped in water at 65 degrees for 60 minutes, strained and extract added to boil at 50 minutes.

Got just shy of 12L into the FV. OG 1.038.

Pitched about 11 last night. Long day after all the 'multitasking'. Now happily rocking away this morning. The yeast and me.

Recipe

Parti-gyle ('2nd runnings') SG 1.025 (68.1%)
Low colour chocolate malt EBC 550.0 (7.3%)
Crystal EBC 147.8 (4.9%)
Amber malt EBC 54.2 (2.2%)
Demerara sugar (8.8%)
Invert no. 1 (8.8%)

90min boil
Fuggle 60min (8.9 IBUs)
Steeped grain extract 50min
Fuggle 30min (7.5 IBUs)
Irish moss 15min
Servomyces 10min
Demerara 10min
Invert 10min
Fuggle 0min (2.0 IBUs)

Chilled to 17 degrees, aerated and pitched freshly top cropped Yorkshire Square yeast.

Observations

Practically no hot break but lots of cold break. Slightly more evaporation. Donald Trump is a obnoxious narcissist.

[Benson_JV]

Sounds like it should be a very nice malty sup. I wasn't aware of Servomyces but that looks interesting.

[nallum]

I've been using it for a while now. Happy to recommend it. It's a proven complete yeast nutrient but rich in zinc, which is a bit low in otherwise nutritious barley worts. A small 10g pack (Lallemand) goes a long way. I use about 0.01g/L in FV wort and 0.2g/L in starter wort. It looks exactly like dry yeast. It's pretty cheap, but if not available, a substitute can be made at home by heating dry bread yeast in 55*C water overnight. It's probably not as rich in zinc so just add a little more, say, 0.3g/L or 0.6g/L in a starter. Add it 10-15min left on the boil (it might be 'active') or at the beginning of boiling a starter.

[nallum]

Dry January is officially finished. The 'raging booze hound' is back and parched. Brew day almost done and enjoying a glass of the parti-gyled Mild.

IMG_1332.jpeg (1.96 MiB) Viewed 2644 times

Not as dark as I was expecting. I made a Dogbolter Porter last week and that wasn't as dark as expected either. I used pale chocolate malt by mistake. The Mild's very nice regardless.

Edit: Forget to add FG. Finished at 1.005, so 4.3% and >86% attenuation. I was expecting something around 3.8% but not a problem. It was very fermentable wort and I pitched freshly top-cropped yeast, so not that surprising. It helps present the specialty malts, to be fair.

[nallum]

Finishing this today. Just waiting for the keg to start blowing.

IMG_1351.jpeg (1.96 MiB) Viewed 2470 times

A surprisingly nice little ale, tbh. But I wouldn't be able to party-gyle often to replicate it. So I might try it using '1st runnings'. It's that nice.

[nallum]

I'm going to have a go at this cracking little beer with '1st runnings' tomorrow. It's destined for the pin then the beer engine in a couple weeks.

Made some minor tweaks based on what I've got.

I think I'll use the short malt pipe, because the mash is going to be very loose otherwise, which isn't going to be great for enzyme activity/collisions/conversion. Just need to think about water treatment with odd volumes for half-batch mash then standard boil.

Edit: I've decided to stick with the pale chocolate for this one. It might be a key factor. I don't know.

[nallum]

Little mash with a few g gypsum and good pinch of chalk.

IMG_1395.jpeg (3.19 MiB) Viewed 1833 times

It looked quite dark at the end of the mash, but it was 'liquored back' a lot.

IMG_1399.jpeg (3.51 MiB) Viewed 1832 times

Smelled very nice.

Straightforward 90min boil.

IMG_1400.jpeg (2.26 MiB) Viewed 1828 times

IMG_1404.jpeg (2.31 MiB) Viewed 1827 times

[nallum]

Forgot to take the yeast out of the fridge. 🥴

IMG_1406.jpeg (1.95 MiB) Viewed 1803 times

Not to worry, they'll be ready to rock in an hour or two. Top cropped 'Olympians' a couple days ago.

[nallum]

Nice clear wort. Darker than it looks.

IMG_1408.jpeg (1.39 MiB) Viewed 1790 times

Especially after adding the invert #3

IMG_1411.jpeg (2.02 MiB) Viewed 1788 times

[nallum]

Got just over 23L into the FV. More than enough for the pin, losses factored in. OG=1.035. A few points less than expected, but not bothered, because it's so fermentable and should get to where I expect. The mash was on the stiff side, ironically. Maybe a bigger batch with the full malt pipe is a better option? Or a bigger 1.5 batch with the 0.5 liquored back separately? We'll see.

IMG_1416.jpeg (2.71 MiB) Viewed 1773 times