A lot of us who have been at it for a long time eased into all-grain via partial mashing; however, I do not see partial mashing having the value today that it had back then. It is much easier to jump from extract to all-grain brewing today due to the depth of knowledge that is readily available and the ease of purchasing purpose-built brewing gear. Partial mashing was a way to get one’s feet wet with mashing without having to build an all-grain setup from scratch. The reason why keggles became popular was because the only places that sold large stock pots (Vollrath or Polarware) were restaurant supply companies and they usually did not do retail sales; therefore, the first hurdle was to acquire a kettle large enough to boil seven gallons of runoff. Very few houses had a range that was powerful enough to handle a kettle that large, so the next hurdle was acquiring a stove powerful enough to bring seven gallons of runoff to a boil. However, for me, the biggest hurdle was getting my mind wrapped around brewing outside. Overcoming that mental hurdle postponed my move to all-grain by a few months. How about you?
I’ve never done partial mash. I started brewing with extracts in the mid 90’s. My only limiting factor was space. When we moved to a larger house in '97 I bought a picnic cooler for a mash tun and a turkey fryer.
I did partial mashing in a cooler for a bit, but I was frustrated by my local store not stocking LME in the sizes needed for a partial mash. They mostly had the large bags for full extract batches, and I didn’t want to go to DME. I had been doing partial boils on the stovetop but I knew that wouldn’t work for all grain. I purchased a cheap 10 gallon kettle on sale and put my own electric element in it and built my own controller. Now I am all grain and all electric, brewing inside in the kitchen and quite happy with the result.
I skipped from extract to all-grain brewing, without really doing partial mashing. The initial hang-up was space; I was in smaller apartments, and couldn’t do much beyond a stovetop setup for my first five or six years of brewing. Once I moved into a bigger place, the brew gear intimidation factor was the next hurdle. The distinct impression I got from local brewers I met and from the most prominent posts online was that I would have to invest in a 3 tier system in the multi-thousand-dollar price range, with all of the space and hassle. Then I learned about batch sparging, and that I only needed to buy a 10 gallon kettle, a 10 gallon Igloo cooler, a decent burner, and a few odds and ends to get rolling. Although there was some equipment investment, it was only a fraction of what I had thought I would need to get into all-grain brewing! It has been many years of happy brewing since then!
When I started a big thing was"extract+steeping grains." The kit told you to steep crystal and roast make in a bag at 150F for 30 minutes and I couldn’t understand the difference between that and partial mash. Then BIAB came, and I say next to a random homebrewer unloading his 10 gallon kettle in a bar and I went all grain.
When I moved to all-gain, I literally did not know a single person who brewed all-grain beer. Brewing knowledge was that sparse. The Internet had yet to be commercialized. There were dial-up services with brewing areas and there was Usenet. Brewing was still a mad monk squad kind of thing that most people found to be odd to say the least. Heck, no one I knew drank craft beer (it was called microbrew back then). Beer still meant Budweiser or an import in green bottles. Every once in a while, someone would spring for a six pack of Boston Lager or Olde Heurich. Many of the early microbrews were not actually brewed in a microbrewery here on the East Coast. For example, Boston Lager was brewed under contract by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company and no one thought that that was odd. F.X. Matt brewed for a lot of micro labels, including Old Heurich and New Amsterdam.
My son bought me a partial grain kit and a case of bottles for Christmas about 7 years ago - that’s how I got introduced to home brewing. I found an LHBS and took its beginning brewer class, bought a Brewer’s Best starter kit, Papazian’s book, and a glass carboy. Then I ordered an immersion chiller and a Blichmann burner - and it was off to the races. I brewed a few more partial grain kits before buying a picnic cooler mash tun and other equipment to move on to all-grain.
Last year I finally got tired of lugging all of the propane-based equipment from the basement to the back porch in order to brew, so I bought a 3-vessel horizontal electric brewing system from Bobby at BrewHardware.com and made a brewery in the basement.
I bought a lot of other toys to go with the hobby over the years, most recently a Blichmann Quick Carb, a pH meter, and a Milwaukee brix refractometer. My only regret, but it’s slight, is that I didn’t go bigger and better sooner - I have a lot of things laying around that I don’t use any more.
A guy from my homebrew club brewed partial mash for 10 years until 3 years ago when he opened a brewery. He didn’t brew all grain until he opened his 7 barrel brewery. That brewery is doing well now and has been able to adapt to carry-out only.
It’s an attractive “in” for people who don’t want to have extra equipment for mashing. You can mash on your kitchen stove and lauter through a large colander. It gives you better beer than pure extract and is a good stepping stone to all grain. That said I probably brewed like 3 batches partial mash and extract before I jumped to all grain.