Cutting Brew Day Time the time challenge!

[Owly055]

Sounds interesting, let us know how your fermentability turns out.

I'd be curious about doing some of the base malt with a under modified euro malt and the rest as your typical base malt, would the base malt provide enough conversion to counteract the euro malt in a quick mash or will the euro malt decrease the attenuation enough that you could control the attenuation by your ratio of base malts

I'm brewing Sunday AM.... Within 3 or 4 days I should have an idea about attenuation. I'll post my results. It's amazing how many ways there are to go with brewing.

H.W.

 

[Owly055]

It took about 20 minutes to mash at 162 F this AM. I struck with 170F water, and had some problems breaking up clumps. 5 pounds pilsner 2 pounds wheat. I attribute the slower than expected conversion to the fact that the grain was dry when I struck with 170F water. Normally, I dough in at low temp and heat up through the mash. In this case I didn't want to give beta a chance, so I struck HOT. Once conversion actually started, it really only took about 4 minutes... Nothing much happened, then the brix reading on my refractometer shot up to 16 and stayed there.

Clearly the extended soak as I heat up to mash temp makes conversion happen fast when it starts. The gelatinization phase (I presume) is a prerequisite for the conversion phase.

My objective as stated before with this mash is to produce a sweet wort with low fermentability. To do this I started well above the range where beta amylase ceases to operate.

Even with the "long" mash, and a 45 minute boil, I'm going to come in at about 100 minutes start to finish. Last hop addition just went in. Chiller is ready, fermenter is ready, yeast is ready to pitch..... etc.


H.W.

 

[TexasWine]

Looking forward to hearing how this Shandy turns out.

 

[Owly055]

Looking forward to hearing how this Shandy turns out.

Me too........ Hope it won't be a dumper! Efficiency came out only 75%, but considering an OG of 1.078, I didn't expect the efficiency of a lower gravity brew. I pitched heavy, and had bubbles within 20 minutes, and it's percolating merrily away. The real challenge will be the "mix to taste" in the secondary. I would normally expect to see between 7.5 and 8% abv. I'm hoping it will attenuate out at about 3%. Much more than that, and the amount of lemon I can add will be reduced.. much less and I'll add corn sugar to bump the alcohol...... I'm hoping for the latter situation!

H.W.

 

[brettwasbtd]

Will do! Using WLP002, which looking back at my notes (didnt keep good ones) I am not 100% sure of my normal attenuation with this yeast, but I mashed at 151 so I am hoping for upper 60th percentile for attenuation. White labs states 63-70%. I have considered BIAB and can definitely see the time savings. I was thinking how vorlauf, runoff and then repeat for sparging was a real time killer. Didn't get up to a boil til the 2 hour mark - thats 80 minutes from end of mash to boil! Cleaning seems to be the little odds and ends, my mash tun is already clean and dry by the end of the boil. I have ball valve on my pot, but need to get a hose barb and hose so I can drain right into the fermentor. Using a racking cane is not efficient! Also have to lug everything up to a kitchen sink for cleaning.

Just wanted to follow up on this. My OG was 1.056 and my FG was 1.018 which works out to be 68% attenuation - well within the upper range of WLP002, so I dont think I lost anything on attenuation.

 

[Owly055]

Just wanted to follow up on this. My OG was 1.056 and my FG was 1.018 which works out to be 68% attenuation - well within the upper range of WLP002, so I dont think I lost anything on attenuation.

When I was sparging my grain bag, in a colander over an auxillary bowl because my container was not large enough to allow the colander with the bag to rest in it, efficiency was quite high, and sparging was rapid, as it was a "saturate and squeeze" process. I would pour the hot water carefully into the grain until it was saturated, then using a round bottom metal bowl, I would squeeze by pressing the bag. The wort was heating to boil while I was doing this, so no time was taken up with sparging. The heat went on as soon as I was ready to lift the bag.

In reality there is little or no difference between doing a mash this way and using a conventional mash tun. I used more strike water than you would, and extracted the wort from the grain by squeezing.

I still squeeze in the same way, (separate container) removing the colander, though I could squeeze right into the boil kettle, simply because it allows me to use my 2500 watt floating heater along with the flame beneath the kettle. This brings me from mash to full boil in 7 or 8 minutes.

H.W.

 

[monkeyman1000]

Bottling my Christmas Ale today. My OG was 1.079 and FG was 1.014. That was with the shorter mash time of about 24 minutes. Pretty happy with that and will be doing shorter mash times from now on.

 

[Owly055]

Bottling my Christmas Ale today. My OG was 1.079 and FG was 1.014. That was with the shorter mash time of about 24 minutes. Pretty happy with that and will be doing shorter mash times from now on.

I did a traditional hour mash this AM because it worked out better with my morning activities. The result was an abortion. I measure brix when doing a stove top mash, and stir steadily and watch for conversion, which is visible as the mash thins and clears. With an hour mash, I simply wrap the kettle with insulation and blankets and forget about it. Mash temp was 152 at the start, and consisted of 5 pounds of two row and a pound of wheat malt, and a quarter pound of CR75.

When I unwrapped my mash and set it on the stove top the wort was still milky and thick, and the brix was only about 10....... far below my expected brix of 16. I started heating and stirring slowly, and at about 155, the brix took off and leveled out at 16. I'd only lost a degree and a half during the hour mash, so I'm not sure what went wrong. When doing hour mashes in the past, I never monitored conversion, I just trusted in God like everybody else, so I don't have a baseline for comparison. I presume the conversion probably completed previously as I heated toward mash out. (note that these brix readings are uncorrected refractometer readings.... I use brix during the mash instead of corrected SG..... I don't know why, I just started doing that and know what to expect).

Interestingly, my 20-30 minute mashes achieve the same attenuation as I was getting with a "conventional" 60 minute mash, so as far as I'm concerned, there is absolutely no reason to mash much longer than 30 minutes........if you do it right. "Doing it right" appears to be the challenge.

For me "doing it right" means doughing in at a fairly low temp and heating rapidly into the mid 140's, and then either managing my rate of temp rise, or doing a "splash down" with cold water from the low 150's back to the mid 140's and repeating the slow temp rise. Raising the temp faster, and straight through to the low 160's results in a lower attenuation wort. 155F seems to be the magical temp where conversion happens very rapidly, but fermentability is reduced if you get there too fast.

I'm reaching the point where I can predict attenuation pretty accurately. I design my mash procedure and know at the outset where I'm going to end up fairly closely. I'm for some reason not achieving the efficiencies I was......... this one hit 79% according to Brewer's Friend, but that's pretty darn respectable.


H.W.

 

[TexasWine]

I was reading up on barleywine this morning. Came across this interesting statement: "Because we are after these sugars, we should mash in at about 149°F (65°C). At this peak temperature, almost all beta diastatic conversion is complete after about 10 minutes, provided the mash pH is roughly between 5.2 and 5.4."

http://byo.com/stories/issue/item/224-big-bad-barleywine

 

[Owly055]

I was reading up on barleywine this morning. Came across this interesting statement: "Because we are after these sugars, we should mash in at about 149°F (65°C). At this peak temperature, almost all beta diastatic conversion is complete after about 10 minutes, provided the mash pH is roughly between 5.2 and 5.4."

http://byo.com/stories/issue/item/224-big-bad-barleywine

The quote below is from your link above:

We know that beta amylase enzymes from barley start showing activity at temperatures as low as 104 °F (40 °C), but that these enzymes reach their peak performance as they approach a temperature of 149 °F (65 °C). At temperatures above 149 °F (65 °C), beta amylase activity slows down. At 158 °F (70 °C), it all but stops. Most of the sugar produced by beta amylase is maltose, which is a two-molecule sugar (disaccharide). Beta amylase also produces a certain amount of other fully fermentable sugars. Because we are after these sugars, we should mash in at about 149°F (65°C). At this peak temperature, almost all beta diastatic conversion is complete after about 10 minutes, provided the mash pH is roughly between 5.2 and 5.4.

I haven't ever even checked PH........ I'll get some litmus paper next time I get to the LHBS........ I'm curious now. This however explains the higher than expected attenuation in my 10 minute mash. The fact is that I doughed in with 130F tap water, which put me around 120.......within beta range. I heated rapidly to 145, reducing temp rise to 1 deg per minute, watching the brix and iodine tests, and had full conversion at about 155. The attenuation was surprising...... I was only 3/4 of one percent alcohol below what would be typical for an hour mash. Clearly there is something to this. My current technique is to "splash down" from 155 after full conversion, using cold water to drop the temp back to 145. Because of the brief dwell time at 155, the beta amylase is mostly still intact, and increasing the temp gradually (1 deg per min) gives exactly the same attenuation I get with a one hour mash. Thus I am basically doing a 20 minute mash, instead of an hour, but I'm stirring frequently.

It is my belief that this "reverse step mash" allows the alpha to break down the starches, and set things up for the beta....... which is what happens anyway, but accelerates the process by hitting the optimum range for alpha, without dwelling excessively, and doesn't denature the beta. I've added powdered amylase (cheap in pound quantities) in this process, and it seems to accelerate the second step a bit.

H.W.