Lots of grain mush in the wort and scorching

[iandanielursino]

I was making a german pils in my mash and boil 2 with 40 minutes alpha rest and 40 minutes beta rest, and we had a few issues which made the mash take forever, our power kept going on and off and the mash and boil is pretty slow at changing temperatures. We also keep having the mash and boil overflowing the grain basket and emptying the main body if we turn on the circulation pump even a little bit.

Anyways, I notice the bottom of the kettle got scorched pretty bad, and the wort had a whole bunch of like clumpy floaty stuff like four from the grains, which we ended up discarding by just not pumping the very last bit of liquid out of the kettle.

Naturally the wort seems a bit scorched and astringent, but maybe 6 weeks of lagering will help.

I think next time I'll just do single infusion mash again, but I'm wondering if the clumpies are also due to mashing too long, or if there's some other issue. It's also worth noting perhaps that the sparge took forever, did I not break doughballs enough or get my grain milled too fine or something? Maybe overloading the machine, although the manual says 16lb grain/4.8 gallons strike water is the max and I was well under that. I also forgot to treat my sparge water with lactic acid to make it more acidic.

Recipe:

• Grain bill
  • 12 +2/3 lb Pilsner Malt Weyermann
  • 9 + 1/3 oz Carafoam malt, Weyermann
  • 4 oz aciduated malt, Weyermann
  • 13lb 8oz total
• Hops
  • 60 min
    • 2/3 oz perle 60 min
  • 10 min
    • 1 oz tettnanger
    • 1 oz hallertaller
  • 10 min flameout hops
    • 1 oz tettnanger
    • 1 oz hallertaller
• 4 Gallon mash
  • 40 minutes at 142 F
  • 40 minutes at 158 F
  • 10 minutes at 170 F (mashout)
• Prepare 3 Gallon sparge
• Sparge until 7 Gallon preboil volume
• 70 minute boil
• OG: 1.046 expected 1.054 actual
• FG: 1.006
• Pitching temp: 49 F
• Expected yield: 6.5 Gallon

 

[Whisky River]

Sounds to me like too fine a crush leading to lots of flour and the overshoot on your OG.
Did you crush the grain yourself? Do you know what the gap was?
Lots of folks these days crush very fine for BIAB which can often handle the extra flour but if you are using a malt pipe or a false bottom that fine of a crush can lead to the stuck mash and other problems that you seem to have experienced.

 

[iandanielursino]

Yeah the M&B 2 has a grain basket which is more like a false bottom than it is like a mesh bag, and it requires a sparge as the amount of grain it can mash is limited by the grain basket and recirc pump setup to 4.8 gallons thus it cannot handle a full volume mash.

LHBS crushed it, not sure what the gap is. Next time I'll let the guy know that I would like it to be crushed for a non BIAB setup I suppose.

But we also just had quite a long mash, at least 105 minutes, probably more with all our hijinks. I should have noted more precisely how long we waited for each temp change.

 

[SFC Rudy]

I use a bag in the malt pipe. Williams Brewing sells one for the M&B.

 

[iandanielursino]

If I wanted an insane efficiency that might be good but also astringency may become a problem.

I have no problem hitting like 75% efficiencies to hit pretty precise targets so far by using a sparge, and I consider the M&B to be more like a weird 1 vessel (well actually 2, I have to heat sparge water in a separate pot using a suis vide machine) traditional system more than a BIAB system, so I think I'll just ask for less of a fine mill. Plus its enough of a hassle cleaning the bag I use to separate hops.

 

[iandanielursino]

I had another somewhat related thought, I wonder if the Mash and Boil 2 would scorch your mash if you use the higher wattage setting to change steps in a step mash.

I have it in my brewhouse manual to up the wattage at mashout time but not before, but I don't remember why maybe it said to do that in the manual or something. The mashout is pretty quick I think it came up to 170 from 158 in just like 8 minutes.

Edit: Reading the manual it actually only tells you to use 1600 W for the strike water, it actually never says anywhere to use 1000 W for the mash and assumes you are not performing a mashout. I might have got the idea of how I do my wattage settings from a youtube video I watched on using the mash and boil 2 I'll check that later.

I wonder if it would be some kind of sin to pull the malt pipe out between mash steps and increase the wattage and then put it back in to avoid scorching. It sounds like maybe you don't really need to use 1000 W when raising the temp, I think maybe the only reason to use 1000 W is to reduce how much the thermostat overshoots the target temp which is more relevant when holding a temp than when seeking one.

 

[Dancy]

I use a bag in the malt pipe. Williams Brewing sells one for the M&B.

Exactly -- Got a Wilser Bag for my M&B and I've had some fine crushes with no issues.

 

[SFC Rudy]

I had another somewhat related thought, I wonder if the Mash and Boil 2 would scorch your mash if you use the higher wattage setting to change steps in a step mash.

I have it in my brewhouse manual to up the wattage at mashout time but not before, but I don't remember why maybe it said to do that in the manual or something. The mashout is pretty quick I think it came up to 170 from 158 in just like 8 minutes.

Edit: Reading the manual it actually only tells you to use 1600 W for the strike water, it actually never says anywhere to use 1000 W for the mash and assumes you are not performing a mashout. I might have got the idea of how I do my wattage settings from a youtube video I watched on using the mash and boil 2 I'll check that later.

I wonder if it would be some kind of sin to pull the malt pipe out between mash steps and increase the wattage and then put it back in to avoid scorching. It sounds like maybe you don't really need to use 1000 W when raising the temp, I think maybe the only reason to use 1000 W is to reduce how much the thermostat overshoots the target temp which is more relevant when holding a temp than when seeking one.

If it would scorch your mash liquid it would scorch the wort during the boil.

 

[iandanielursino]

If it would scorch your mash liquid it would scorch the wort during the boil.

In that case I think I'll only use 1000 W when I'm already at the set temp, and that makes me more interested in trying separate alpha and beta rests again next time I do a lager.

 

[iandanielursino]

I'm about a little over half fermented now, 1.026 from the sample I just checked. It tastes surprisingly good but its very strong in a flavor I've come to associate with beer that hasn't been cleared (either by cold crash or in the bottle). Which makes sense as the samples is quite cloudy.

I think there's actually two such flavors one from wort and one from hop trub, they're like sharp blunt flavors like as though they're a powder. I've gotten that flavor every time I made beer so I guess so far so good, and its just the wort one, maybe because I did effective hop separation this time. It's hard to tell with a small sample (I just poured a couple inches in a small test tube and used a refractometer and converted from brix by punching in the OG) but I don't think the astringency is that high.

There's also a sweetness (duh) and yeastiness (duh).

I think I'll try the "new school" process and bring it from the fermentation temp of 49 up into an early extended diacetyl rest at 68 now that it's half done.

 

[Stikius]

Bag in malt pipe has saved me from hours of trying to get rid of scorching. A bonus is that the safety cutout in the BK has not been triggered one single time since I started using a bag either. They're not that hard to clean, really. Normally I just turn the bag inside out and rinse it thoroughly. Every once in a while i pop it in the washing machine (without any detergent, just water).

 

[iandanielursino]

Is there any issue with using a bag with a sparge and a coarser milled bill of grains?

 

[day_trippr]

Potentially a reduction in extract efficiency. And it would be moving in the opposite direction of what a bag offers - the ability to use a finer crush for improved efficiency...

Cheers!

 

[iandanielursino]

The M&B is not capable of doing a full volume mash, only up to 16lb grain or 4.8 gallons water, so the only other option I can see would be to do a partial volume mash without sparge and add water, which I presume would have even lower extract efficiency.

I tried a full volume mash one time and it got weird. Always read the manual folks.

 

[SFC Rudy]

Is there any issue with using a bag with a sparge and a coarser milled bill of grains?

I use a bag and my crush looks close to the pictures in How to Brew. I have a second M&B that I batch sparge in. I recently realized that the malt pipe fits in my Anvil fermenter so I can sparge in it .

 

[iandanielursino]

Got down to 1.015 FG and stopped, 9 days at 49, 5 days at 68. Bringing it down to 32 for lagering now.

Strong scorch aftertaste in the sample, hopefully 3-6 weeks lagering will help.