Partial Mash to enhance Beer Kit

sg2017

After using steeping grains/hops to enhance my beer kits with great results, I was wondering if anyone has attempted to use a mini/partial mash to further enhance their kits and what is the best way to go about this? I have a 6 Litre pot and have no intention of getting a larger pot or additional pot due to the size of my abode/kitchen. My idea was to do a mini mash of about 4 Litres to accompany the kit like I would steeping grains, but not sure how much fermentable grains will be needed and how much additional brewing sugar/dme I would need to add after this. Any help/advice would be appreciated

HBO_Staff

You could experiment with the amount of grains and hops you use and make a mini mash, it would probably be trial and error but should give you more flavour. The next step up would probably be to make smaller batches of all grain, such as a 5 gallon recipe refill pack maybe:

http://www.home-brew-online.com/beer-kits-c1/all-grain-kit-t284#b1:b2

The steeping kits we have are quite popular:

http://www.home-brew-online.com/search/steeping

sg2017

Many thanks for this, Ive purchased a selection of hops and grains from you and have had great results. Im aiming to do a mash in order to replace the need to add 1kg of brewing sugar/beer enhancer, I appreciate I may be limited by my 6l brew pot size so may have to end up having to use a little brewing sugar/dme to supplement. Would you know as a rough guide how much grain I would need to achieve this and what fermentable grain is best for an english ale (I will be using my already purchased steeping grains and hops to improve flavour also).

HBO_Staff

This may be hard to work out, you could use grains such as Maris Otter and Golden Promise as these are commonly used beer grains, but to achieve the strength/flavour it may be difficult to work out how much of a mash to do. Perhaps try around 2 Kgs of grain in muslin bags, and heat at around 67 degrees for an hour, in 3 or 4 litres of water. To get the maximum yield from the grain though you may have to do this in a couple of stages - after it has had an hour the liquid could be transferred over into your fermenter, then use some more hot water and steep the bags at around 67 degrees again to extract the maximum flavours. This second batch of water from the grain can then also be added to the fermenter.

You could then add the rest of your ingredients into the fermenter and get the temperature right before adding the yeast and leaving to ferment as usual. You can take a hydrometer reading once all the ingredients are mixed together and dissolved and see what kind of strength it will end up as, and if needed sugar or malt can be added to increase it.