Partial Mash Brew Day - Pay It Pale Ale

I took some time yesterday to brew another batch. This time I brewed a pale ale. It'll end up being amber in color with some nice aroma. It's a modification of Jasper's Snowy Mountains Pale Ale recipe swapping Amarillo hops in for the over used Cascades.

Hopefully it ends up tasty. The brew will be dry hopped for extra awesomeness, and a real hop aroma. The time it takes to cool extract wort tends to cause significant losses of hop aromas. As soon as I get my large brew kettle, I will buy some copper tubing and fashion an immersion chiller to cool my wart. Until then, I have to top up the pot with as much cold water as I can fit and then dunk it in an ice bath. My aromas stay warm and disappear. If the dry hopping experiment works, I may find myself doing small dry hopping additions to non dry-hopped brews. Just wait until I dry hop some milds with simcoe.

This brew was also my first attempt at partial mash brewing. I read on-line that the carapils malt really need mashing to contribute to a brew. So I gave it a shot, and found out that I picked the wrong pan, and had less consistent temperature control than I imagined. I tried to do most of the hour at 155 to allow the magic enzymes to activate the sugars in the grain. There was a spike up to 170 (at least on the bottom of the pan) that may have caused trouble. Hopefully I didn't denature too many enzymes. The spent grains still tasted sweet, and Higgins was willing to eat them. All was not lost. I used 1 qt of water, and a cooking thermometer that didn't always stay at the bottom of the bed.

I sparged the grains with 1/2 gallon of 170 degree water, using a spaghetti strainer lined with a plastic mesh bag. It worked well. I also tried some recirculation (lifting my mash, and sparge water up and passing them over the grains). It didn't work too well. My bed depth was sufficient to yield good filtration. That’s what I get for only using a lb of grain instead of a full batch. I'll up the grain bill over time, and start designing true partial mash recipes. I guess that means it's time to get promash or some other utility.

Specialty Grains: 0.5 lbs. Carapils Malt, 0.5 lbs. 20L Crystal Malt
(Mashed in at 140, 10 minutes at 129, mashed between 150-160 (w/ 1 spike to 170)
Liquid Extracts: 6.6 lbs. Mortons Light Malt extract Syrup
Hops: 2 oz. Perle (60 min), 1 oz Amarillo (10 min)
Yeast: Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast
Etc: 1 tsp Irish Moss (30 min)