Batch 236, Imperial Panama partigyle

I have a good amount of ingredients on hand, and kegs are starting to empty, so I must need to brew! In the past couple of days, my Panama Red, Oktoberfest, and a keg of Mosiac all blew. So I started looking back through old recipes to see what I haven't done in a while. There were several good possibilities, but I settled on this one, because Panama Red, of course! I haven't made this since 2014, so it's due. I have judiciously bolded some things below to get the highlights.

Like last time, this is a partigyle batch, so it's a little more complicated brew day. The plan is to do a single mash, with the first sparge making a stronger beer and the second sparge making a somewhat smaller beer. The original specs for this recipe are:

OG: 1.067

FG: 1.017

SRM: 11.7

IBU: 62

I'm making two 5 gallon batches, a 50-50 split on the partigyle, so my handy partigyle calculator says this should give me a stronger beer with 1.89 OG and a smaller beer with 1.045 OG.

25 lb 2-row

1.5 lb Crystal 60

1.5 lb White wheat

4 oz chocolate malt

This is almost exactly the same grain bill as my regular Panama Red, this one just has a little more 2-row to bump the OG to get the individual OGs that I want.

Heated 10 gallons of water to 170F (in my regular HLT),  but I was weighing hops and didn't pay attention, so the mash water got up to about 185F. I cooled it down to 170F, then mashed in with 10 gallons, mash temperature was 153F (mash tun thermometer), adjusted pH to 5.2. I think the thermometer on my pH meter is off by about 4 or 5 degrees too low, I checked with 2 other thermometers and got 153F and 152F (bbq instant read thermapen, wish I had a couple more of these, but I think they quit making them), while the pH meter read 148F. I'm not sure if I can calibrate that, I should look into it.

Recirculated 15 minutes. With grain absorption, this should run off to 7 gallons in one boil kettle. It turns out I only got 6 gallons. Hmm.

In the mean time, I heated 7 gallons of water to 180F for the second batch sparge. That came out exactly as planned with 7 gallons of wort back in the secondary boil kettle.

Now that the mash tun was supposedly drained, I went ahead and started the 60 minute boil on the smaller beer. I let the stronger beer just sit for a bit, then scooped out the grain from the mash tun into a 2-bucket strainer that I devised (dead simple, just two buckets stacked, with holes drilled into the bottom of the top one) to help keep the liquid out of my garbage can. This got me an additional gallon of wort for the stronger beer. Kicked on the 90 minute boil on that one.

With partigyle, I have two hop schedules.

For the strong beer, this is exactly the same as for a regular 10 gallon batch of Panama Red:

2 oz Mt Hood, FWH

2 oz Centennial, 60 min

2 oz Cascade, 30 min

2 oz Cascade, 5 min

2 oz Mt Hood, 5 min.

There was math, there are about 115 IBU.

For the smaller beer, I went with:

1 oz Magnum, 60 min

1 oz Centennial, 5 min

Didn't do math. It'll be good. It always is. I'll dry hop with another 1.5 oz Cascade at the end of fermentation.

The yeast came from my last batch, which was in fact Panama Red. That batch has been on cold crash for a couple of days, so I kegged it, harvested the yeast, and poured it right back into this batch. I got about 2.5 quarts of yeast, so I put 1 quart into the small beer and the rest into the strong beer (why do I want to say 'large' instead of 'strong'?)

Overall, the brew day went pretty well, although it does make for a busy day, not a lot of rest time. I ended up with:

Strong/Large beer:

Pre-boil SG: 1.072

OG: 1.082 actual

FG: 1.016 actual

Smaller, but still great beer:

OG: 1.040 actual

FG: 1.009 actual

Darn. I was supposed to get 1.089 and 1.045. The volumes were right, so maybe my efficiency is down? I do have pre- and post boil gravities, so I can check. I'll post back if I think about it.

Update, next day: I did the math, brewhouse efficiency came in at 59%. I've been getting a pretty constant 75%. Check the gap on the mill, maybe? Cleaned and adjusted the gap on the mill to .038.

Update, June 14, 2020: kegged both today. Added 2 oz Centennial to the small beer for dry-hopping. It tasted a little thin, so hopefully a few more hops will perk it up.