One mash, two brews - advice please

[TheMumbler]

I am thinking about brewing something along the lines of Kipling with the following grain bill. I have subbed the torrefied wheat in the recipe posted for wheat malt as that is what I have in.

OG: 1.050
FG: 1.010
IBU: Around 40ish

Single step infusion @ 65 degC
Some gypsum added to the grist

85% Maris Otter
7.5% Munich (Weyermann 2)
7.5% Wheat Malt

My thought is to do a double brewday, so a big mash and then split the wort to get two different beers.This would give me a chance to try out the new shiny MT. I was considering going for an amber/red type of a thing by steeping 500g of Weyermann caramunich 3 (140-160 ebc) hopping as below.

10g Magnum (12% ) @ 60 mins
20g Cascade (7% ) @ 30 mins
60g Cascade (7% ) @ 5 mins
20g Cascade (7% ) dry hop

for 33ibu

This would have to be fermented outside of the temp controlled fridge so I was wondering whether some saison yeast (NBS dry saison) which should handle the higher temps better would be a good idea or whether it would clash with the cascade. The alternative would be NBS west coast. I guess I could wrap a wet towel around the FV in the daytime to keep the temp down.

Obviously I could just go for a single brewday.

Any thoughts or comments appreciated.

[seymour]

Sounds like a good plan, if I understand what you mean. At first I thought you were going to talk about Parti-gyle technique, but it sounds like you're really just making one big batch of beer and splitting it into two fermentors, right? Maybe two boils with slightly different hops?

In any case, if you want to research more about historical parti-gyle brewing (two distinctly different beers from one mash), check out these great articles:

"Parti-Gyle Brewing" by revered brew scholar Randy Mosher, in Brewing Technique Magazine way back in 1994

"Parti-gyle Brewing: Techniques" from Brew Your Own Magazine, Jan/Feb 2010

And last but not least, a Brew Your Own Magazine Mar/Apr 2011 article, "Fuller’s: The Pride of London" featuring homebrew recipes from their brewmaster!

[jaroporter]

i do the same kinda thing there. i also can only temp control one fermenter, but i like to mess around with extra wort to see if i can stumble on something great. in this heat i'd brew the main beer and chuck a saison or belgian yeast in any remaining wort. when it gets a bit cooler i can use some english ale yeast in the remainder for a nice estery bitter. i got a citra pale ale maturing with the NBS yeast which seems to have come out pretty well, but another that got very hot over the last month in a caravan and seems a little bit too funky - so i'm gonna go forage some things from the hedgrows to chuck in it and we'll see if i end up with something interesting! *EDIT* i add that as a disclaimer that it might not work out (but i'm not giving up hope yet!) pitch cold as possible either way i reckon and definitely go for the double brew and just see what happens!

[TheMumbler]

Thanks for the replies, I thought this was going to sink without a trace.

Seymour: Thanks for the links, I know about partigyle and I have done a bit of reading on it in the past (I have brewed a couple even). Still much better to have the links that not, so thanks. The US view of English beer seems to be very Fullers-centric from what I see in articles and the BJCP guidelines, is that actually the case? But I digress... at the moment I want to restock with fairly regular beers, so a big beer/little beer split isn't really what I'm after just now. Plus I always seem to fail with big beers and I want something reliable as I am really low on stocks.

I may have another go with some sort of scottish strong, 60/- split in the future as I have some scottish ale yeast I could culture up and I've been meaning to have a go at blending a scottish strong and an oatmeal stout to approximate Broughton Double Champion. Finding the time is the main thing there.

So yes my basic idea is to make a large volume of wort which gets split 50/50. Two boils with different hops, I only have capacity to boil one batch at a time anyway so it makes more sense to me to do different hopping schedules. My plan was to steep some caramunich to add sweetness and colour to one batch thus giving more variation between the beers. So one pale NZ hopped and one amber/red US hopped.

As jaroporter says, different yeasts are another way of changing things and I was wondering about a saison yeast in the amber because I wanted to have a crack at Jaipur so I wanted to keep that nice and cool when fermenting to keep it clean. However I'm not sure how that would pan out, saisons are normally blonde so I'm worrying about the caramunich a toudh. Also I'm not really sure whether cascasde would play well with the saison yeast. I guess I could go with the saison yeast for the Jaipur type of a thing to give it a different twist. Again I'm not sure how the yeast profile would interact with Nelson Sauvin but it seems like it might be a winner and would remove the potential flavour clash with the caramunich.I would appreciate your thoughts.

That said, I have less MO than I thought, so I'm now probably going to do some sort of ordinary bitter (~1038) type affair with Challenger and maybe late Columbus using Mild Ale malt as the base, probably S04 for yeast in the next day or two so that will tie up the fridge for a bit.
Edit: brewing this today

[seymour]

Seymour: Thanks for the links, I know about partigyle and I have done a bit of reading on it in the past (I have brewed a couple even). Still much better to have the links that not, so thanks...

Cool, good to hear, and everything you went on to say makes sense to me. I hope you didn't feel I was insulting your intelligence.

The US view of English beer seems to be very Fullers-centric from what I see in articles and the BJCP guidelines, is that actually the case? But I digress...

I never thought about the BJCP guidelines connection to Fullers, you could be right. I don't know exactly why they are ordered in such arbitrary ways, dividing English ales into nonsensical categories, using strict ranges and terminology which--as far as I can gather--has nothing to do with actual English brewing, past or present! I can't imagine how stupid we must look when you knowledgeable guys skim over the competitions rules...
Anyway, I think we Americans enjoy Fullers beers, I know I do, but I wouldn't say they're considered the end-all-be-all. We don't get a lot of classic English ale exported to us, but Fullers is on the short list of UK breweries on the shelf at a decent bottle shop. Obviously, you fin Newcastle and Guinness most places, but occasionally better options from St. Peters (which I understand does WAY more business over here than back home), Samuel Smiths, Theakston, sometimes a few Wells and Young, Greene King, Black Sheep, Meantime, J.W. Lees, Wychwood, Morland, every once in awhile Adnams, Harveys, Wye Valley, Belhaven, Marstons, several of the bigger commercial ciders, and surely a few others I'm forgetting.

In any case, happy brewing and best of luck with your double batch!

[TheMumbler]

Seymour: Thanks for the links, I know about partigyle and I have done a bit of reading on it in the past (I have brewed a couple even). Still much better to have the links that not, so thanks...

Cool, good to hear, and everything you went on to say makes sense to me. I hope you didn't feel I was insulting your intelligence.

No, not at all. I just couldn't find a way of saying that I didn't really need the links, but was grateful for them without sounding potentially snarky! I would always rather have somebody give me the information than not. I'm no master brewer and always looking to learn

Thanks for the info on English beer over there, I was just curious really. Fullers seems to loom large in the stuff I see from the US but it is really just a vague impression I have. I guess that may well be because they are a big brewery and lots of tourists go to London. I'm sure we see a pretty skewed sample of US ale. Beer is quite regionalised here, I have only had a pint of Fullers once or twice and I'm not sure I've ever had it tap outside of London. You hardly ever see Robinsons on tap up here let alone Fullers or Youngs. I'm not much into in the bottled version but bottled bitters really are a poor relation to the cask version IMO.

[seymour]

...I'm not much into in the bottled version but bottled bitters really are a poor relation to the cask version IMO.

So I've heard, but we rebels have to take what we can get. The cask ales we get are few and far between, and are obviously American breweries trying to approximate English styles (which are still typically delicious.) In those extremely rare instances where I've tasted "the same beer" on cask as well as forced CO2 keg or bottle, the cask has always been vastly smoother and tastier. You guys know what's up.

I gotta figure a way to get Critch over here with a bunch of his casks one way or another!

[TheMumbler]

Turns out we do get Fullers up here once in a while I had a pint of Chiswick Bitter last night. I believe that is the low strength part of a partigyle brew. It was OK, nothing special to my mind. Plenty of flavour considering the abv which is what you want in a session beer.