Another Partial Mash

[monsteroyd]

I was cleaning up or rather trying to use up some grain I bought a while back for my first partial mash. This time I decided to try a little amylase enzyme, since most of what I had needed to be mashed, and I only used a little 6 row. I had a BD oatmeal stout HME, and BeerRust will know this, I was interested in making a stout, So I used

1/2 lb carapils
1/2 lb crystal 10L
1 lb oat flakes
3/4 lb honey malt
1/2 lb 6-row
1/4 tsp amylase enzyme

I bagged this into a couple of small muslin sacks that I had and knotted them closed. Then I brought a gallon of water up to 160, removed from heat, sprinkled the enzyme in and stirred, then lowered the 2 bags into the stock pot with the water and dipped them a few time like big tea bags to get them soaked, stuck the stock pot into an old styrofoam ice chest and let it sit for an hour. I then pulled the bags up and let them drain and then squeezed the water out of them, and used that wort as my starting point for the stout. I added 1/2 lb of dark DME, gently boiled this wort for about an hour (about the best I could do with my hot plate) with some hops at 15 minutes, and 1/2 a whirlfloc tablet at 5. A flame out I added the HME and 1/2 lb of lactose and 3 vanilla beans and left the hops in to dry hop. (I used 1 oz of hallertau.) I put a gallon of cold water in the LBK, and then let the boiled wort/hme sit for 10 minutes or so to cool a little and then poured that into the LBK and topped it off with more cold water. This got me down to about 82, so I pitched the yeast and put it up to ferment.

I was just flying by the seat of my pants here watching football and drinking some nasty nutmeggy stuff I made to use it up. It was 7% so waste not want not, but I didn't like it at all, anyway that's another story.

I was questioning when to add the enzyme as I know too hot and it denatures, but you have to get it into the low 150's to convert starch to sugar, I added the enzyme right at the start at a measured 158 F (measured in the center of the water). Was that the way to do it?

And I had to squeeze the grain bags pretty tightly to get all the wort out. I used a colander and a stainless bowl that fit inside it to press the bags against the colander sides. I think you only get tannins at 170, so I was nowhere near that hot, probably in the 120s. I should have measured the temp then.

Did I do this right? or within the boundaries for getting decent beer?

It's just my second PM, and I did get sticky thick wort out of it, so I assume I got close.

Monty

[Brewbirds]

I've never used the amylase enzyme so I can't help you there but JoeChiante might chime in when he sees this, I think he uses it.

Since you had flaked oats I don't think you needed the carapils but 1 lb of flaked oats sounds like a lot to me if this is an LBK sized batch.

I have lost my favorite grain chart but if I remember correctly honey malt has a little bit of ability to mash but not enough to be a base.

Did you take a hydro reading before you added the HME?

[monsteroyd]

I've never used the amylase enzyme so I can't help you there but JoeChiante might chime in when he sees this, I think he uses it.

Since you had flaked oats I don't think you needed the carapils but 1 lb of flaked oats sounds like a lot to me if this is an LBK sized batch.

I have lost my favorite grain chart but if I remember correctly honey malt has a little bit of ability to mash but not enough to be a base.

Did you take a hydro reading before you added the HME?

Yeah I prolly overdid it a bit trying to use stuff up. I have some 6-row in there to, so I may not have needed the enzyme anyway.

No should I take a gravity before HME in the future?

Monty

[Brewbirds]

Well not knowing what brewing software you use, if it gave you an estimated gravity of the wort with the HME being a late extract addition the hydro reading would have told if you hit your target. If you are doing a hop boil a reading would tell you whether you need to add DME or water to get the best utilization.

Hey you made beer only time will tell how it turned out now.

I would recommend searching articles in BYO.com about partial mashing vs. steeping, specialty grains brewing with oats etc. to get a better idea of the ratios of specialty grains to base grains.

[monsteroyd]

Well I do have beersmith, but I didn't use it for this. I am just learning it, and still have to figure out how to do LBK sized batches with it, and how to do the partial mash calcs with it as well. It seems geared for AG or DME 5 gallon batches. And you're right I probably did make beer.

AS far as researching the grains, I did a little, and that's where I came up with a pound of oatmeal, and that you can steep it, but it really needs a mash. I plan on using a little enzyme in the oatmeal-only steep on my next batch (the RCE batch) to see if it gets more 'oatmeally'. The rest I threw in to use it up before it goes bad.

Monty

[Brewbirds]

I asked BB2 if he would put together a post for how we got our equipment dialed into BS. That might help you get your BS set up.

[haerbob3]

In Beersmith find the closest equipment profile that matches what you have, copy it and edit to your specs. Do the same for a mash profile to match your specs for a partial mash. Go through the Beersmith forums a lot of helpful information there to help you get started.

[joechianti]

Time to chime. I think you did just fine the way you used the amylase enzyme. I keep some on hand just for times when I don't think my grain bill is quite as enzymatic as I'd like, just for insurance. As for the amount of oatmeal, I'm curious to hear how it turns out. Probably delicious. Good luck.

[monsteroyd]

OK so I go to bottle this, but the gravity is 1.034, started at 1.088. I am going to wait and do another gravity tomorrow. Is this a stuck ferment? Should I pitch some more yeast?

Help!

Monty

[philm00x]

What type of yeast did you use? With such a high gravity, it's possible if you used a regular ale yeast (downunda, 05, etc) that the yeast reached their threshold for alcohol and stopped working. A recipe I'm working on for a Belgian tripel has a starting gravity of 1.081 for potential 9.4% ABV, and that's going to need a high gravity Belgian yeast (I'm using 3522 Ardennes, which can handle up to 12% ABV. You may want to pitch some more yeast so it can attenuate further. Otherwise, I'd be weary of bottle bombs.

[mashani]

That sounds too high. What yeast did you use? I can't figure out what your actual mash temp was, but there could possibly be a lot of unfermentable stuff in there if it was on the warm end. But even so that still sounds too high.

[monsteroyd]

My Mash was probably on the high end, I started out at 160F and let her sit in a syrofoam chest for an hour, so it lost a little, I need to take more temps during these things. I don't really know what it was at the end.

The yeast was the yeast that came with the Brew Demon Oatmeal Stout cans. I have some Safale US-05 or S-04 I could throw in. It may just be super high in unfermentables, but I thought I would ask the Borg. I was worried about a bottle bomb.

Thanks
Monty

[rickbray66]

My Mash was probably on the high end, I started out at 160F and let her sit in a syrofoam chest for an hour, so it lost a little, I need to take more temps during these things. I don't really know what it was at the end.

The yeast was the yeast that came with the Brew Demon Oatmeal Stout cans. I have some Safale US-05 or S-04 I could throw in. It may just be super high in unfermentables, but I thought I would ask the Borg. I was worried about a bottle bomb.

Thanks
Monty

The 2 2g packets or the 2 5g packets?


Rick

[mashani]

What comes with the BrewDemon kits is S-33 (they said so themselves). You should have gotten over 70% attenuation with it. It's not a high floc yeast so it should not need rousing.

You are at about 62% attenuation if I'm doing the math right in my head, so that's not right. You are NOT over the alcohol tolerance for that yeast at this point. That is NOT the issue.

If the gravity is not changing, it's unlikely you will get bombs. You could feed it a bit of sugar, which will pretty much be guaranteed wake up the yeast and ferment out that sugar at least - and if your lucky more, if the yeast just got lazy. But if it just stops back where it is, then there isn't anything fermentable left in there that that yeast can eat, and you won't get bottle bombs unless you get a bottle infection with an organism that can eat whatever is still in there.

But you might need to pour that stuff over ice cream.

If I get a stuck fermentation in the future and I'd rather end up with dry beer then sweet beer, my plan is to make a small stir starter out of some Bella Saison, to build up some ready to rock daughter cells, and then add some sugar to the stuck batch and toss in the starter. That yeast will ferment out ANYTHING that is left in there to eat.

[monsteroyd]

The 2 2g packets or the 2 5g packets?

Rick

I think that would be 2 2g packets.

I am going to just watch the gravity here for a few days. If it stays the same, well I got a sweet-ish milk oatmeal stout, which I will either drink or pour over ice cream.

I'm letting it warm up a bit from 66 to 70 and see if I get any action.

Thanks everyone for the help.
Monty