Brewday: It's Parti Time!

In a fit of perhaps serious optimism I did some brewing in preparation for a major Bar Is Over / Meredith's Defense Is Over / Housewarming party that will take place in early August. Since I had little time and a lot of catching up to do I decided to do two parti-gyle brews back to back, one week apart. Hah hah, I know.

Parti-gyle brewing is a historical method of brewing whereby the first runnings of the mash are collected for a strong beer, then second runnings are collected for a weaker beer. This is a great way to make different beers with different alcohol strengths, and to use the grain more efficiently. The idea would be to get a start on two barleywine strength beers and also make two regular-to-light session beers for the party. I'd make a huge wheat mash and split it into a wheatwine and a summer wheat ale. Then use the yeast from the primary of the wheatwine to ferment an American barleywine and a second American Amber. The wheat beer would be called Triticus Maximus and Triticus Minimus, the barleywine would be this year's Shoggoth's Old Peculiar, with the amber being Shoggoth's Little Peculiar.

That was the plan anyway. And it was a good plan.

Things I have learned from the experience:

1. Don't do a parti-gyle brew as your first brewday in a new house. Just don't.
2. Don't do a parti-gyle brew as your second brewday in a new house. Just don't.
3. Seriously, you don't know what kind of boiloff rate and efficiency you're going to get with your new location. Madness and Chaos will ensue.
   
4. Take a temp reading on your tap's hot water before you start heating it for the dough-in. I was looking to do a protein rest on Triticus at 122 degrees, which meant strike water at about 135. So I started heating the water and dropped the thermometer in: 145. That after about two minutes of heating. So I did a whiskey tango foxtrot and measured the hot water coming out of my tap. 136 degrees! "Safe" water temps are in the 120's. Which explains why I kept burning the crap out of my hands when I did the dishes. But at least I know I can protein mash right out of the tap! Sweet.
5. Unpack everything and put it in its place before you brew. Make sure everything is there. Don't find yourself with 5 minutes till flame-out but your heat-exchanger out-tube and thermometer are MIA. Then find yourself speeding downhill to the wonderfully named Tacoma Screw to get some kind of bodged together hose barb solution.
   
6. Also learned: "It's a beer emergency!" will get a shopkeeper to stay open a few minutes after closing to help you.
7. Homebrew Rule # 1836: Your wife will inevitably find the hose you were looking for within moments of you returning.
8. My kettle has a false bottom that functions as a hopback. It functions quite well actually, when you use whole hops. When you use four ounces of pellet hops, don't put them in a hop bag because you get lazy, and can't whirlpool because your kettle draws right out of the middle, your valve will clog. Halfway through cooling Shoggoth's Old Peculiar. Lesson learned. Fortunately Oldy came out at a frightening O.G. of 1.120 (was shooting for 1.090). So the rest was dumped into the bucket holding the runnings for Little Peculiar and the whole thing was diluted and boiled at about 8 gallons. This resulted in somewhere near 4 gallons going to the Little Peculiar at 1.050 and the rest diluting Old Peculiar down to around 1.085. Chaos and Madness, appropriate for a Lovecraft themed beer, but it all worked out. Though now I have no idea what the IBUs or hop profile will be like. I may have a very bitter amber indeed.
9. I haven't figured out when to stop the fly-sparge on a partigyle. I went too long on Triticus Maximus and so Minimus came out at 1.030 and I had to spike it with Extra Light DME. And Shoggoth's just ended up being chaos.
10. Since it gets dark at around 10 PM right now at least you have lots of extra time to finish your brewday when things go horribly, horribly awry.
11. My new cellar holds a near constant 64 degrees. Sweet!
    

On to the recipes. To make them I used Randy Mosher's parti-gyle tables to figure out the needed O.G. of the 'master' beer, then estimated 60% for the 1st half and 40% for the second. Then spiked them with DME to my liking. I made three recipes in BeerSmith, one for the master and one for each half (estimated and 60/40 of the master). I could then adjust the hops to get the right level out of the two beers based on their gravities. So here goes:

Triticus Parti-Gyle - Master
Brewer: Russell Everett
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.80 gal
Estimated OG: 1.072 SG
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
8.0 oz Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 2.00 %
4 lbs Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 16.00 %
10 lbs Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM) Grain 40.00 %
8 lbs Pilsen Malt 2-Row (Briess) (1.0 SRM) Grain 32.00 %
8.0 oz Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 2.00 %
8.0 oz Caramel Malt - 20L (Briess) (20.0 SRM) Grain 2.00 %
8.0 oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 2.00 %
2.00 oz Horizon [12.00 %] (90 min) Hops 39.5 IBU
2.00 oz Pearle [8.00 %] (90 min) Hops 26.3 IBU
1 lbs Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 4.00 %


Mash Schedule: Double Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 20.00 lb
----------------------------
Double Infusion, Light Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
30 min Protein Rest Add 4.50 gal of water at 134.8 F 122.0 F
30 min Saccrification Add 3.00 gal of water at 203.5 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Decoct 2.73 gal of mash and boil it 168.0 F


Notes:
------
This assumes DME added to boil based on amount stated in the separate recipes. The total DME listed is the total amount needed for both recipes. 4 for Maximus and 1 for Minimus. 1lb honey for Maximus. This should make 5.25 gallons of 9.5% Wheat Wine and 5.25 gallons of 4.75% American Wheat Ale, but honestly take gravity readings and shoot from the hip. You will also need 2 oz Perle for Minimus and 2oz Horizon for Maximus. Also 6g Kaffir Lime Leaves and some lemon grass, in a tea, at bottling, for Minimus. Yeast was a 1L starter of Pacman for Maximus and American Wheat for Minimus.

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Shoggoth's Old Peculiar - 10 gal parti-gyle - Master Recipe
Brewer: Russell Everett
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: I could murder a Shoggoth's...

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.80 gal
Estimated OG: 1.075 SG
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
5 lbs Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 18.69 %
14 lbs Pale Malt (Weyermann) (3.3 SRM) Grain 52.34 %
5 lbs Munich (Cargill) (9.5 SRM) Grain 18.69 %
1 lbs Caramel Malt - 60L (Briess) (60.0 SRM) Grain 3.74 %
1 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 3.74 %
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 1.87 %
4.0 oz Special B (Dingemans) (147.5 SRM) Grain 0.93 %
1.00 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] (90 min) Hops 20.4 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (90 min) Hops 8.6 IBU
1.75 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (90 min) Hops 35.8 IBU
4.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] (90 min) Hops 62.9 IBU
3 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 21.75 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Light Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
75 min Mash In Add 5.44 gal of water at 168.3 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Decoct 2.17 gal of mash and boil it 168.0 F


Notes:
------
Theoretically the gravities would be 1.090 and 1.055. As for hops, the idea was to do 1 oz. Chinook at 90, 1 oz. Simcoe at 30, and 2 oz. Centennial at 10 for the Old Peculiar. For the little guy it would be 3/4 oz. Chinook at 90, 1/2 oz. Cascade at 30 and 1/2 oz at flameout. The hopping went to chaos after I had to mix half of the finished Old Peculiar into the Little Peculiar. So for that boil I added no bittering hops, and 3/4 ounce Cascade at 15 minutes and 3/4 at 1 minute.
Yeast was the Pacman from Triticus Maximus for Oldy, and Wyeast Northwest Ale for Little P.


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