My first partial mash was such a complete disaster that it was embarrassing. All of my talk about being able to brew a quality beer and I was not even able to properly move up to partial mashing. You learn from your mistakes and can only improve which I believe I have. This time around I feel I came closer to a proper partial mash brew session, though to be honest I still feel as there is a lot of room for improvement.

Eurorail Ale -

I love brewing!

Grain Profile -

• 1.0 lbs 2-Row Malt
• 0.5 lbs Caramel Malt (20L)
• 0.5 lbs Munich Malt
• 0.5 lbs Vienna Malt
• 0.5 lbs Quick Oats

Mashed at 70-75C for 55 minutes. Sparged at 80C.

Extract Profile -

• 3.3 lbs Coopers Canadian Blonde Ale Kit LME
• 1.0 lbs Dextrose

Hop Profile -

• Northern Brewers @ 45 Minutes
• Mount Hood @ 25 Minutes

Misc -

• Irish Moss @ 10 Minutes
• Yeast Nutrients @ Cold Break

Steps -

1) Collect Ingredients, clean, clean, clean.

I will turn you into beer.

2) Mashed grains in the brewpot with 5L of water at 70-75C water for 55 minutes. At 55 minutes I removed the bag of grain from the water and let it drain into the pot for about 10 minutes.

Oh yes. There will be mash

3) Sparging was difficult to do without a mash tun. I brought another pot of water to 80C and tea-bagged the grains from. I then strung the grain bag over the brewpot and poured the water over it to rinse the grains as completely as I could.

Its like babysitting, except more rewarding

4) Brought water to boil and brewed as normal. Added hops at correct times.

Keep an eye on this too because it may boil over. And that sucks.

5) For the cold break I took advantage of our Canadian climate and used mother nature to take my wort from 100C to 30C in less the 20 minutes. I cooled the wort the rest of the way with cool tap water, topping off the fermentor.

Yes freezing cold is bad most of the time, but today not so much.

Its a balmy -25c right now, perfect beer brewing weather

Final Gravity reading was lower then expected again, but I believe that is because my mash efficiency is still very low. Finished at 1.038 vs. the 1.047 I was targeting. I believe I may have over filled the primary slightly, but that’s alright as it just serves to make a lighter beer.

The other mistake I made this round was using a fermenter that does not have a lid. I make shifted a santized aluminum foil lid in place of it. This should serve fine, but I may actually use a secondary for this ale to help prevent any infection. It could also help to clean up the massive amount of trub I got from the mashing the grains.