Since I have only done one partial mash in the past, I thought I would brush up on the technique. Here are my top 10 points I can pass on to would be partial mashers:

1. Get your hands on the October 2006 issue of BYO magazine. It has a great article on countertop partial mashing.
2. I bought a picnic cooler to mash in. You don’t need one, but it helps to keep the temperature of your mash steady.
3. I haven’t modified the cooler to make it easy to separate the wort from the grain like a false bottom or a manifold, so I am just going to use a grain bag. I am going to keep the bag as loose as possible to ensure I get a good soak.
4. There are a few different ratios of hot water to grain out there. I am going to use Chris Colby’s 1.375 quarts to every pound of grain.
5. I know I should heat up more water than I need and I should heat it 11-15 degrees hotter than my mash temperature.
6. After mashing for an hour, I will open the spigot and let the wort drain into a large pitcher. Then I will pour it back over the grains to recirculate it since the first runnings are cloudy and probably full of husks.
7. Then, I will drain the cooler into my pitcher again until all the sweet, sweet wort has flowed out of the cooler
8. I will then pour the wort gently into my brew pot.
9. After draining the cooler, I will fill it up again with water that will settle to 170 F and I will let it sit there for 5 minutes and then drain it again.
10. Not sure how much water I will need to add to the wort to get to total of 6 gallons to brew (I will need 6 gallons for the boil to end up with 5 gallons in the fermenter), but that amount is what I will put in my kettle.

If I think of other partial mashing tips, I will post them. I probably will have a bunch after my brew sessions.

All right. I think I gotta brew a batch for the Sam Adams Comp. I came up with this American Pale Ale recipe:

4 lbs. 4 oz. American 2-row
2 oz. American Caramel 60°L
4 oz. American Victory
3 oz. Honey Malt
3 oz. Special B Malt
3.5 lbs. Dry Extra Light Extract
.5 oz. Cluster (Pellets, 5.50 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 30 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 15 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 1 min.
Yeast: White Labs WLP051 California Ale V Yeast

Original Gravity: 1.054
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 8.51 °SRM
Bitterness: 37.5 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.50%

If you look closely at the ingredients list, you will see that I have profiled many of them in recent posts. I may need to alter some of the ingredients if I can’t get them.

I will be following a partial mash procedure for this recipe. Here is my brew log for this beer:

American Pale Ale Preparations

Checking On The Hops

Checking On The Grains

APA Brew Day

Getting a Better Bottle carboy would allow me to lager a beer.  I have plans to brew a cream ale in February or March and lager it through the cold months using:

• A styrofoam box that I got from Mike…looks like it was used for Omaha steaks
• Snow and/or ice from the outside
• If there isn’t any snow or ice outside, I will freeze half liter water bottles and use them

I think that I can regulate temperature just enough without freezing the beer.  Without a spare fridge, I am willing to give this makeshift ice box a try.

We ran a content poll a few days back and readers want to see more recipe posts…among other things.  Here’s a cream ale recipe I created last spring.

4 lbs. American 2-row Pale
0.25 lbs. American Caramel 10°L
3 lbs. Dry Extra Light Extract
0.50 lbs. Flaked Corn
0.5 oz. Cluster Pellets boiled 60 min.
0.5 oz. Cascade Pellets boiled 15 min.
WYeast 1056 American Ale

I followed a partial mash procedure for this recipe. The American 2 row malt was placed in a gallon size ziploc bag and Mike and I crushed it using a rolling pin. Since there was 4 pounds of the stuff, we had to crush it in shifts. We placed the 2 row in 2 gallon cylindrical beverage cooler along with the caramel malt (I crushed that too) and the flaked maize (yeah, corn). 5.5 quarts of 160 degree water was poured into the cooler to reach the mashing temperature of 149 degrees. The grains sat in the cooler for an hour. After an hour was up, I took the cover off the cooler. Mike has a sweet strainer which I placed over the top of my kettle. I poured all the contents of the cooler into the strainer; the liquid past through to the kettle and grains stayed in the strainer.

Nice.

While the mash was resting, I heated 2 gallons of water in another pot to 170 degrees. I poured this water over the grains in the strainer slowing. Mike told me this step was called ‘rinsing the grains’. I filled the kettle with water to get it to the 5 gallon mark.

The boil lasted for 60 minutes. I added the hops at the beginning of the boil and with 15 minutes to go. We used the wort chiller to cool the wort to 70 degrees and I added the smack pack of yeast.

Primary fermentation lasted for 1 week and the beer was cold conditioned in Mike’s fridge for 2 months.

O.G: 1.040
F.G: 1.009

The beer was light in color, very clean tasting but more flavorful compared to say a Bud Light. It wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be, so next time I will boil it for 90 minutes. Also, I will probably use only Cluster hops in the future.

I will put up a style profile for Cream Ale soon.

I ordered this yesterday from morebeer.com.  I have done a fair amount of ordering fom these guys in the past and I am usually pretty pleased.  The customer service is generally quite good on technical issues and order issues.   I’ll track how long the order takes to get from West Coast to East Coast.

I also ordered a new high pressure gauge for my CO2 regulator.  I knocked over the tank when moving the fridge and smashed it.  The regulator still works fine but I can’t tell how much gas is in the tank anymore.  I also ordered a regulator cage to protect the gauges for the next time I knock it over.  I’ll post pics of the replacement procedure once the gauge and cage show up with the oxygentation setup.

 Happy Brewing!!

Now that I have a propane cooker, I need to get some other equipment. The most important item is a wort chiller. Since I will be brewing a larger volume of wort, I need something that will cool this larger volume from just under boiling temperatures to fermentation temperatures (around 70 degrees).

When you first start out brewing your own beer, you boil a concentrated wort that ranges from 1 to 2 gallons for recipes that make 5 gallons of beer. After you are done boiling it, you add it to your fermentation vessel with enough plain ol’ water to make 5 gallons. As you probably can guess, it’s a lot easier and quicker to cool 1 to 2 gallons of almost boiling wort to 70 degrees. I would take my boiling pot and let it sit in my kitchen sink in an ice bath for about 10 minutes. While the pot was sitting there, I would take 3+ gallons of spring water that were cooled in the fridge and pour them into my fermantation bucket. Pouring my wort into this cool water always brought the wort to a temp where I could put my yeast in and not be afraid of killing the little guys.

Why do you need to cool the wort quickly? Well, the faster you can get the wort into the fermentation vessel (just fancy talk for bucket), introduce yeast, and seal it up, the less chance there is for wild yeast to get into your wort and make it taste funky. Quick cooling means more control over the final taste of the beer.

After some research, More Beer looks like it’s the place for me to buy this piece of equipment. The free shipping offer on orders over 59 bucks is the biggest reason I am ordering from this site.

Here’s a photo of the one I want:

I have some other items I want to buy too. Once I get a moment to order it, I will let you know how the experience is.

Here’s a post about getting my wort chiller.

Yeah, I got it.

It’s Sweet.