We are brewing an Imperial Stout this weekend and wanted to try making a Small beer with the spent grains and was wondering if anyone had experience brewing Small beers and if an Imperial Stout would be an appropriate style to make one with? Thanks
Yeah, that should work great. I do it when I make a BW. What’s the OG of the big beer and how much grain are you using?
Thanks Denny! We are using 15.5 pounds of grain for a 5 gallon batch size with an OG of 1.078
I tried this sort of on a whim the last time I brewed a Barleywine. What I ended up with was a smaller batch (around 3.5 gallons) of an APA that was a little on the low end in terms of gravity - so I called it a “Session Pale.” Though the Session Pale turned out pretty good, I wish I’d had some DME on hand to boost the gravity just a little to help balance the hops better. It was fun to try, a good learning experience, and I’ll do it again for sure.
A mild would probably work pretty well with second runnings from an Imperial Stout.
I did a small beer/partigyle using the final runnings from an Imperial Ale and a Winter Ale fortified with some corn sugar and it turned out quite well. Ended up with an extra 8-10 gallons of very drinkable beer for about 10-15 extra dollars. So I would reccomend giving it a whirl, you don’t have much to lose but a little time and a small amount of money. Good Luck
I’ve done this a few times. If you run about 5.5 gallons of water through your grains after you lauter out the RIS, you will get a 5 gallon beer around 1.032 (I would have to check my data, but that sounds about right). You could add 4# of malt extract and get a great beer. Hop as desired.
The rule of thumb that works well for me is that you’ll extract about 1/3 as much sugar with each successive runoff. So if you’re running off 6.5 gal at 1.060, your small beer would be 6.5 gal at about 1.020. Or 4.3 gal at 1.030, etc.
I was faced with a similar situation after brewing a IIPA this weekend. Hit a 1.103 on my OG and since I fly-sparge, I had a little over 2 gallons of 1.035 wort left after I had run-off into my kettle. I added a little DME to get it up to 1.040 (which I didn’t really need to do) and then pressure canned it into 8 quart sized jars for starter wort. Now when I want to do a starter, I can just grab the canned wort, put it in a flask or gallon jug, add yeast and throw it on the stir plate! Done in 2 minutes!
I did one two weeks ago. The RIS was no sparge. I pulled 57% eff. with it. I normally get 85% eff. and sparged for the rest of it. I also added some roasted and crystal malts to the mash before during the sparge to make the partigyle. I think the first running got most of the color. I bottled the FG sample of the RIS and it was great (for a 10 day old RIS.) I still have not tasted the partigyle. I’ll keg it tonight. I made a thread that might have some useful info in it.