Hefe, Parti-Gyle, and SMaSH!

This weekend was a crazy brewing weekend.  I had promised a friend, Tom, that I would brew a Hefeweizen with him, which we decided to brew Friday night.  We seemed to have hit all our metrics but I decided to just pitch a vial of yeast (if the vial were super fresh I'd probably be ok, but it was a couple of months old).  We will see how it affects fermentation.  I didn't take any pictures of the happenings mainly because I didn't feel like it.

Saturday morning I awoke at 6am.  I had a parti-gyle mash to do.  For those of you who don't know what that is and want more details on it, look here.  For the broad strokes, its an old fashioned approach to brewing which gets more sugars out of the grain.  You can have a big batch of grain and make two beers from it that, on average, might be slightly stronger (more sugary) than if you brewed the two batches completely independent of one another.  Sometimes that always doesn't work out.  Today it is primarily used as a way to make a really strong beer and then a weaker beer.

I've wanted to brew a Barleywine for our wedding reception (which is less than 6 months away!!) but my current system does not allow me to efficiently make high gravity beers (for the record, in this post when I make any reference to 'efficiency' I am basically talking about the amount of sugar extracted from the grain. A fixed amount of grain has a maximum amount sugar it can yield.  So my meaning of efficiency within this post is how close I am getting to the maximum theoretical yield).  So I thought that if I added a few more pounds of grain I could do a parti-gyle mash where I collect 7 gallons worth of first runnings for my barleywine, and then batch sparge with another 7 gallons of hot water to further rinse the sugars from the grain and yield a second, smaller, batch of beer. So...

For Mark and Amber's wedding I made a batch of 'Matrimoniale' that I actually was quite proud of.  Working loosely off that recipe, I made my recipe (spoiler alert for those of you who thought I would keep my brews a surprise):

20# American 2-row
4# Munich
4# Wheat
1.5# Crystal 20L
1.5# Crystal 90L
0.5# Crystal 120L

Mashed at 151F for an hour.  Remember, this is a parti-gyle mash.  So my first running gave a corrected starting gravity of 1.086.  This yielded an OG right around 1.100.  Here were the other details for the brew:

2.7 oz. Northern Brewer (10.5%AA) at 60min
1.5oz  Chinook (11.8%AA) at 10min
1.5oz Willamette (4.7%AA) at 10min
1.5oz Chinook at 0min
1.5oz Willamette at 0min

20grams of Safale US-05 dry yeast, rehydrated.

On the second runnings I was a little lower than I had hoped, but not terribly so.  The corrected starting gravity on the second batch was right at 1.039.  This gave an OG right around 1.046.  Here were the details for this smaller batch.

0.7 oz. Northern Brewer at 60min
0.3oz Chinook at 10min
0.3oz Willamette at 10min
0.4oz Chinook at 0min
0.4oz Willamette at 0min

9grams of Safale US-05 dry yeast, rehydrated.

Basically, the smaller gravity batch is a teaser for the barleywine.  I will ferment both and save the Barleywine til the wedding.  The smaller brew I will probably be drinking here very soon.  I hope it turns out.

Here are some pics of the process:

The grains. No water yet.  Mash tun is almost full!

Protein rest.  I had to do two infusions because otherwise I would have been trying to lift 11 gallons of hot water up to pour it in the tun.

And it's a good thing I did two infusions.  Turns out I overestimated the size of my mash tun and ran out of room for strike water.  SO to get to my target mash temperature I had to pull a decoction.  It was a short decotion, just enough to raise the temp in the main tun another 10 degrees.

Temperature has been obtained!

First runnings.  Tough to see but it's a pretty good color.  Nice burnt orange even in the thin tube.

Hop Spider getting it's first workout.  It has seemed to have passed with flying colors!

Racking to the fermentor.  I was happy with the color.

The hop turd from the spider.  Put it with my cascades.

Second runnings.  Very close in color to the first runnings.  Obviously, just a little lighter.

We got our first frost last night.  I thought the ice crystals on the rearview mirror were really neat.  They were standing straight up.

So after a 9 hour parti-gyle session I decided to brew another small 2 gallon batch of what the homebrewing community calls a SMaSH (single malt, single hop).  The purpose of a smash is to isolate a malt and/or hop to better learn it's characteristics so that you can make educated decisions on how to formulate recipes with more complex malt and/or hops bills.

My local homebrew club has monthly meetings with little mini club competitions.  Each month we pick a style or ingredient or spice/flavoring to add to a beer for the meeting two months in advance.  Brewers who are intrigued can partake and bring their brew to that meeting to go against other brewers.  So December's competition is SMaSH beers.  In the US, a lot of SMaSH beers are lighter malt varieties with high alpha-acid american hop varieties.  I decided I wanted to meet somewhere in the middle.  Loving german malts and american hops I decided to make my SMaSH out of Munich Malt and Northern Brewer hops.  Here's my recipe (for 2 gallons):

4# Munich
 Mash at high 140s for 60min

0.2oz Northern Brewer at 60min
0.2oz Northern Brewer at 10min

4 grams of rehydrated Safale US-05.   Sorry no pics for this brew, just wanted to knock it out.
I hope it turns out well and does well for me at the competition.

As you can see from this posting, I've kinda gone 'all-in' with the dry yeast.  It will either be genius or bite me in the a$s.  I plan to at least live to tell the tale.  That's all for this posting.  Below is one last pic of all carboys filled up this weekend.  17 gallons of brew!

Clockwise from left: 2gal Munich Commoner, Matrimony Mild?, Matrimony Wine, Steinau Weissbier

I obviously enjoy brewing.  But 17 gallons in 30 hours is a lot!