First Partial Mash Recipe - Recommendations?

[Cheap Charlie]

Hi All, I will be doing a partial mash as I don't have the gear to do an AG batch as I only have a 20L stock pot. I was thinking along the lines of 1kg of pale ale malt and 500g of a specialty malt and make up the difference with 1kg LDME to make a 20L batch. Can anyone suggest a basic ball park recipe I can base my first brew from? I've done a lot of searching and can't seem to find any consistency. Recipes range from 1-2.5kg grain with 1kg LDME. The beer doesn't need to be high abv, maybe a OG of 1.040+. Aiming for an aussie pale ale with a bit more body and flavour than say great northern . COPA would be awesome, but a basic lawnmower beer would be ok for first shot. My thinking here is to get a base to work from and go from there. Thanks in advance for any replies

[Shamus O'Sean]

On 2/18/2023 at 5:41 PM, Cheap Charlie said:

Hi All, I will be doing a partial mash as I don't have the gear to do an AG batch as I only have a 20L stock pot. I was thinking along the lines of 1kg of pale ale malt and 500g of a specialty malt and make up the difference with 1kg LDME to make a 20L batch. Can anyone suggest a basic ball park recipe I can base my first brew from? I've done a lot of searching and can't seem to find any consistency. Recipes range from 1-2.5kg grain with 1kg LDME. The beer doesn't need to be high abv, maybe a OG of 1.040+. Aiming for an aussie pale ale with a bit more body and flavour than say great northern . COPA would be awesome, but a basic lawnmower beer would be ok for first shot. My thinking here is to get a base to work from and go from there. Thanks in advance for any replies

This is my suggestion for a COPA:

The night before, pre-cool around 10 litres of water in the fridge.

• 2kg Pale Malt - Any kind will be fine.  Coopers Pale Ale would be best.
• 200g Wheat Malt
• 50g Crystal Malt (can leave out if you do not have)
• 1kg Light Dry Extract (add to fermenter)

10L of mash water at 75°C.  Aim to keep between 65°C and 70°C for an hour.

Sparge with another 10 L of water at 75°C.

Boil for 45 minutes.  Adding 16g of Pride of Ringwood at the start of the boil (45 minutes) for about 22 IBU.

After the boil, put the pot into the sink surrounded by cold tap water.  Add 15g of Pride of Ringwood for about another 3 IBU.  Empty the sink and refill with cold water a few times to get the wort temperature down.

After 20-30 minutes, strain into your fermenter (or if hops are in hop socks/Chux or similar, remove them).

Add the 1kg LDM to the fermenter.

Top up fermenter to 20 L with the pre-cooled water.

Check SG.  Aiming for around 1.043

If temperature is down to around 20°C, pitch yeast.  Preferably, some harvested Coopers Commercial Yeast.  Otherwise, simple US-05/Nottingham.

[Shamus O'Sean]

On second thoughts, @Cheap Charlie, minimise the sparge.  Cooling around 17-18L of boiling water will take ages.  Instead, sparge with 2-3 L.  After the boil, top up with cooled water, or even a few litres of ice blocks (water frozen in Tuperware or similar overnight).

[Cheap Charlie]

Cheers @Shamus O'Sean. Thanks for the recipe, it's close to what I was thinking I needed to do. COPA is my favourite beer so if I can copy that I will be rapt . I already did the partial yesterday with 1.2kg base malt (no idea what the LHBS put in it, some sort of pale ale) and 300g crystal. I reckon the pot could accommodate 2kg base malt easily. I mashed it with 15L of water at around 67ºC and sparged it brining the pot fairly full. I brought it up to the boil for an hour but the volume didn't reduce much on my crappy stove. The SG was 1.025 at this stage with hot wort. I decided to add 1kg LDME at this stage, not sure if a good idea or not which brought the SG up to 1.045. Oh of course I added hops, 10g of POR at 60min and 15g Ella at 30min, but tasting it I think I should have added the Ella at 15min. I'm playing around with brewgr to get my head around IBU's and colour etc, but of course will only build up faith in these calculators after tasting the final product . Realising I had around 20L of hot wort I had no choice but to put it in a cube to cool over night. 

Next time I will follow your advice using 10L with 2kg malt and sparging with 2L of water and boiling for 45 minutes.

[Pale Man]

4 hours ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

On second thoughts, @Cheap Charlie, minimise the sparge.  Cooling around 17-18L of boiling water will take ages.  Instead, sparge with 2-3 L.  After the boil, top up with cooled water, or even a few litres of ice blocks (water frozen in Tuperware or similar overnight).

Thats what I do, 3 litres is ample for a partial mash sparge. Dont be afraid to give the bag a bit of a squeeze.

Also batch sparging in 3 litres can be handy. Throw the bag in the sparge water to rinse out left over sugars.

[Cheap Charlie]

1 minute ago, Pale Man said:

Thats what I do, 3 litres is ample for a partial mash sparge. Dont be afraid to give the bag a bit of a squeeze.

Also batch sparging in 3 litres can be handy. Throw the bag in the sparge water to rinse out left over sugars.

Great idea, less mucking around for such a small amount, I definitely will do that next time.

 

[Cheap Charlie]

Just put down the brew, the SG was 1.036 so added 500g of dex to bring it up a bit. Pitched Us-05, it tastes good so will see how it turns out.

[Tone boy]

Hey @Cheap Charlie. I do a lot of partial mashes - just about every brew I do.

I mash with 3.3 litres of water per kg of grain. 1 hour mash. Then I batch sparge with about 2 litres of water per kg of grain.

Boil for 30 minutes adding hops as required. Works ok for me anyway. I don’t want to cool large volumes of wort.

Cheers

[Cheap Charlie]

No word of a lie, I was just looking up water to grain ratio and @Tone boy you just answered my next question. Cheers! (thumbs up emoji)

[Tone boy]

4 hours ago, Cheap Charlie said:

No word of a lie, I was just looking up water to grain ratio and @Tone boy you just answered my next question. Cheers! (thumbs up emoji)

Hey CC, when I first got into partial mashing, the awesome @ChristinaS1 gave me the best info here:

Not sure what your level is at so please don’t take offense if you already know this. I found it to be the best guide to partial mashing, so flick through those posts and have a read (2 longer posts from Christina basically). I hope it helps you.

I printed it out b/c the search function is a bit of a dud. Took me ages to find again and I knew what I was looking for!!
Cheers man

[Cheap Charlie]

Cheers @Tone boy, got a bit of an understanding now, playing with some calculators to get IBU's and EBC's. I have truly searched this forum a lot as I don't want to post a new topic when the info is already there, same as most forums the search function doesn't work as well as it should. I recognise @ChristinaS1 from other posts but I haven't seen much lately. Cool mate, I will read the thread. At this point it looks like 2kg in 10L pushing to 3kg with a 2L sparge. Perfect (thumbs up emoji). All this is sort of temporary as I will get a better setup when finances permit.

[Tone boy]

8 minutes ago, Cheap Charlie said:

but I haven't seen much lately

Yeah unfortunately Christina had to give up brewing due to a health issue. She left a great legacy though with some good advice.

[iBooz2]

On 2/20/2023 at 11:14 AM, Cheap Charlie said:

 COPA is my favourite beer so if I can copy that I will be rapt . I already did the partial yesterday with 1.2kg base malt (no idea what the LHBS put in it, some sort of pale ale) and 300g crystal. I reckon the pot could accommodate 2kg base malt easily.

@Cheap Charlie IMO 300 g of crystal is too much and it will make it a sweeter beer.  My advice is to do a partial mash with 2000 g of the CPPM (you have a sack full), 200 - 250 g of wheat and just 50 - 80 g of the crystal light malt.  After your boil your mash liquid allow it to cool to 80 C and throw in 25 g of POR hops, let them soak for about 20 minutes then remove and chill the wort.

Add this cooled/strained wort to an FV along with a Coopers Australian Pale Ale kit can and you are well on your way to a very nice partial mash beer. 

Yes, it is much better if you use a harvested batch of CCA yeast.  Cheers - AL

Edited February 23, 2023 by iBooz2

[ben 10]

35 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

IMO 300 g of crystal is too much

Yes it is

[Cheap Charlie]

12 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

@Cheap Charlie IMO 300 g of crystal is too much and it will make it a sweeter beer.  My advice is to do a partial mash with 2000 g of the CPPM (you have a sack full), 200 - 250 g of wheat and just 50 - 80 g of the crystal light malt.  After your boil your mash liquid allow it to cool to 80 C and throw in 25 g of POR hops, let them soak for about 20 minutes then remove and chill the wort.

Add this cooled/strained wort to an FV along with a Coopers Australian Pale Ale kit can and you are well on your way to a very nice partial mash beer. 

Yes, it is much better if you use a harvested batch of CCA yeast.  Cheers - AL

Thanks AL I've got a copy of your recipe , yeah dived in head first on this one. Is there no need to boil hops at 60 minutes and just hop stand at 20 minutes or something like that?

[iBooz2]

3 hours ago, Cheap Charlie said:

Thanks AL I've got a copy of your recipe , yeah dived in head first on this one. Is there no need to boil hops at 60 minutes and just hop stand at 20 minutes or something like that?

If you are using a kit can of Coopers Australian Pale Ale as a base then there is no need to do a hop boil as that part has already been done in the kit can.  Just do the aroma hop steep at 80 C for 20 mins.  Never boil kit can extract goop as it will make your beer very dark and more bitter.  Just add the kit can goop to the FV and add your cooled partial mash wort and of course, the required amount of water.

If you are just using extra light dry malt only to add to your FV along with your partial mash wort then yes you do need to do a hop boil in your partial mash process to achieve the required amount of bitterness (IBU).  If want your beer to have a nice hop aroma then also do the 80 C steep of hops as well or a dry hop later in the ferment.  Do not boil your light dry malt mix either as that will make for a darker coloured beer.  Just add the light dry malt to the FV and then add your cooled partial mash wort and water.

Hope that makes sense.

Edited February 24, 2023 by iBooz2

[Cheap Charlie]

6 minutes ago, iBooz2 said:

If you are using a kit can of Coopers Australian Pale Ale as a base then there is no need to do a hop boil as that part has already been done in the kit can.  Just do the aroma hop steep at 80 C for 20 mins.  Never not boil kit can extract goop as it will make your beer very dark and more bitter.  Just add the kit can goop to the FV and add your cooled partial mash wort and of course, the required amount of water.

If you are using only extra light dry malt to add to your FV along with your partial mash wort then yes you do need to do a hop boil in your partial mash process to achieve the required amount of bitterness (IBU) and if want your beer to have a nice hop aroma then also do the 80 C steep of hops as well or a dry hop later in the ferment.  Do not boil your light dry malt mix either as that will make for a darker coloured beer.  Just add the light dry malt to the FV and then add your cooled partial mash wort.

Hope that makes sense.

mate excellent tips, I have done all of the above unfortunately. Yep makes good sense, I appreciate your help - I'm an information sponge at the moment

Just checked and I have all the ingredients for your COPA on hand!

Edited February 24, 2023 by Cheap Charlie

[Cheap Charlie]

Second partial

• 2kg Maris Otter in 10L for 60min at 65º
• 3L sparge, dumped bag in pot
• 15g POR at 60 min
• 15g POR steep 80º for 20 min
• hot cubed into woolies 10L water container

Next day added 1kg LDME and water for a volume of 20L. Backfilled on to US-05 yeast cake and boy did she go to town! Ferment dropped 30 points in 24 hours! Note to self, check the amount of yeast in the fermenter . Cold crashed for 3 days, kegged it today, but it was super cloudy and not just from the yeast. I will see if I can get the haze down in the next brew. That will be 3kg of coopers pale malt in 10L.