Beer Forum

I'm thinking of making a barley wine and figured why not also make a small beer from the second runnings (I'm batch sparging). Has anyone tried this... and is it worth doing?

It's worth it for the experience and to be able to say you've done it! (I haven't... )

Several times, in my experience the second beer will be extremely fermentable so account for that. I like to add a pound or two of grain for the second beer. Usually add some xtal and or munich malt.

darn tootin!
Ive done it a few times. As stated above, you can throw in a bit more spec grains to adjust to the style. Having some dme or lme on hand isnt a bad idea, either.
I sure do enjoy looking at 2 full carboys after a brewday. Nothin beats 2 for 1!
Cheers and good luck!

spiderwrangler wrote:It's worth it for the experience and to be able to say you've done it! (I haven't... )

Me either. Although I did just brew a barley wine, and thought about it. I didn't do it. But I thought about it. So if I added more grain would I have to do another mash, or could I get away with a 30 minutes steep?

Yes, absolutely go for it. If you do, prob best to make one of the batches smaller than normal unless you add extra malt (or you can add some extract to the 2nd boil). In my experience, a 2nd batch of the same size is usually waaay mild (i.e. ~1.030-ish og), so for my 10 gallon system, I will batch sparge out 5 gallons of my heavy beer, then 10 of the small. Take an og reading in the kettle at the end of the 2nd sparge and add DME if you need or want to.

Dirk McLargeHuge wrote:

spiderwrangler wrote:It's worth it for the experience and to be able to say you've done it! (I haven't... )

Me either. Although I did just brew a barley wine, and thought about it. I didn't do it. But I thought about it. So if I added more grain would I have to do another mash, or could I get away with a 30 minutes steep?

No you don't need to do another mash, add the extra grains to your current mash with like an hour left in the boil on your big beer. Maybe a little hot water also, that will give the enzymes plenty of time to convert before you run off your second beer.

When I brewed an RIS, I filled my mash tun to the brim. While that was going, I put a couple pounds of oatmeal, two row, and crystal into my old mini-mash set up, and added that to the second runnings. Made for a nice little 1.035-1.040 "Mild Oat Stout".