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Newbie to BeerSmith confused when entering "partial mash" data

worldzfree

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Jan 21, 2011
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I used to extract brew a lot.  I stopped for a while because of other stuff in life going on.  I am getting back into it and want to start back doing all grain.  I have an old recipe that I liked and want to enter the data in and then convert it to an all-grain recipe.  I have pretty much all my data and ingredients entered in including my specialty grains.  I don't understand the methodology of entering the partial mash info. 

Disclaimer:  What I was doing back then may not even be considered partial mashing.  I was just doing something the brew shop owner recommended and it turned out ok.

In a nutshell, while I was bringing my brew water to a boil I would heat two 1qt quantities of water.  one quart was for sparging the grains and the other was for soaking the two 8oz quantities of specialty grains in a grain bag.  I would bring the water to 170 and then take it off the heat and then soak the bag.  After 20 minutes I would remove the bag and empty the pan into the kettle where I already had dumped my extracts.  I would then sparge the bag over the kettle with the remaining quart of water.

My question is:  Assuming I was actually doing something that is legit :D, how do I enter what I just described into the partial mash section of BeerSmith?
 
Just select Type as Partial Mash, and enter your two grains in the recipe.  But at those higher temps to start at 170F, you're nuking any enzymes, so it is strictly a "steeping"  suitable for crystals and those grains that don't require mashing.

As an aside, if you reduce your temps to the 150-158 range, and hold them there, you would have a real mash condition and could use 2-row, munich, vienna, etc., that would boost your fresh malt aroma/flavor in the beer without much more effort.  I used to keep the pot in a warm oven and it held the temps OK.
 
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