# Using enzymes for mashing



## old mike (27/5/14)

I have noticed that enzymes can be used for mashing grain,http://www.specialtyenzymes.com/ are thes available in OZ? they would save having to buy malted grain.


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## Not For Horses (27/5/14)

As an aspiring maltster that makes me sad. I go to a lot of effort to develop flavour and colour in my malts.
Sure it can be done but there is so much more to building a beer from malts than just getting fermentable sugars.

Ed: being a little melodramatic but trying to make a point


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## n87 (27/5/14)

so my take on this, knowing that certain tastes come from the malting process... is...
could you use these to do a... say 5 minute 95% efficiency mash?
that would save some down time on brew day... just throw your grains in as the water is heating up... take grains out without turning down the burner and go strait to boil.
(talking BIAB... not sure houw it would work otherwise)


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## manticle (27/5/14)

Tastes come from malting, mashing and boiling.


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## Bribie G (27/5/14)

That's how they get maltodextrin amongst other products. Potatoes or wheat in, maltodextrin out. Similarly maltose rice syrup.


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## jaypes (27/5/14)

According to reinheitsgebot whatever comes out at the end would technically not be 'beer'.

I like to think of my craft brewing as a modern take of a centuries old process, 4 raw ingredients go in, 1 masterpiece comes out. 

No enzymes needed


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## Bribie G (27/5/14)

Don't diss my Hahn Super Dry bro.


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## philmud (27/5/14)

jaypes said:


> According to reinheitsgebot whatever comes out at the end would technically not be 'beer'.


So you eschew kettle finings, adjuncts, yeast nutrient, spices, etc too?


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## jaypes (27/5/14)

Prince Imperial said:


> So you eschew kettle finings, adjuncts, yeast nutrient, spices, etc too?


Yep


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## philmud (27/5/14)

jaypes said:


> Yep


Oh well, most brewers don't place such arbitrary limitations on their input/output.


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## jaypes (27/5/14)

Dont get me wrong I have used those in the past, I stopped using Irish Moss when I ran out one day - I changed my process a bit and the resulting beer came out just as fine as the previous batch.

I have about a dozen or so recipes that I stick too, nothing too fancy these days


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## philmud (28/5/14)

Fair enough, if the styles you're brewing don't require anything further, then why add them.


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## mje1980 (28/5/14)

jaypes said:


> Yep


Do you brew according to the reinheitsgebot? Curious


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## mr_wibble (28/5/14)

But then you could never make anything with Belgian Candi Sugar. 
That would make me sad.

The British had their own beer purity law a few years later (maybe 80?).
Something about the addition of cobolt(?) making the beer darker.

I read about it in Pete Brown's "A Man Walks into a Pub" (review), or maybe it was "Hops and Glory" (review). Edit, another good review.
I very much enjoyed the latter book, although both were good. 
My dad said he liked "Hops & Glory" too, and he's not a beer geek.

cheers,
-kt


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## jaypes (28/5/14)

mje1980 said:


> Do you brew according to the reinheitsgebot? Curious


Technically no as I do add dex or CO2 to carbonate.


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## TimT (28/5/14)

Pretty sure they sell some of those at my local brew store (Cellar Plus). I thought the idea was to add to your brew so it worked in combination with malted grains - to enhance the enzymatic effect already present, in other words.

I find the results just in malting and mashing grain are pretty good anyway. You want another enzyme, spit in your mash. Seriously - we have an enzyme in our spit that breaks starch into sugar. Hence the weird 'spit' beers in South America (chicha).

I'm having trouble with a cheese enzyme right at the moment (chymosin). Trying to get this here nettle rennet I made a couple of weeks ago to work to curdle my milk....


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## TimT (28/5/14)

I like the simplicity and the challenge of brewing according to the reinheitsgebot and admire the way it inspired the creation of several important brewing techniques.... but how far do you take purity? Sauergut is an interesting example - in order to lower the pH of their brews (perhaps because the water they were brewing with was not good) German brewers would set the beer aside in warm-but-not-hot water (about 47 C, I think, from memory) and a natural lacto-bacilli would go to work and sour the mash.

They may not have known it at the time - but technically the souring includes a fifth ingredient: lacto-bacilli. So is the brew that results a 'true' reinheitsgebot brew?


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## manticle (28/5/14)

Reinheitsgebot originally didn't include yeast either.


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## TimT (28/5/14)

_Reinheitsgebot originally didn't include yeast either._

Hardcore, Germans. Hardcore.

Reminds me of the line: "Prove how bad-arse you are by drinking coffee without milk, sugar, water, or coffee".

I like Randy Mosher's argument that: "Yeast is more of a process than an ingredient." The same could apply to bacteria.


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## n87 (28/5/14)

TimT said:


> I like Randy Mosher's argument that: "Yeast is more of a process than an ingredient." The same could apply to bacteria.


or even apparatus/tool


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## manticle (28/5/14)

Yorkshireman 1: "Them days we were glad to 'av the price a cup o'tea".
Yorkshireman 2: "A cup o' cold tea."
Yorkshireman 3:"Without milk or sugar"
Yorkshireman 4:"Or tea"


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## Parks (28/5/14)

manticle said:


> Reinheitsgebot originally didn't include yeast either.


Still doesn't AFAIK. The yeast addition comes under Vorläufiges Biergesetz.

So jaypes you better not be adding yeast, my friend!


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## jaypes (28/5/14)

I have a stick that I use to stir the mash, been used in my family for centuries!


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## Rurik (28/5/14)

jaypes said:


> No enzymes needed


Umm there is enzyme's in the grain. It is how we malt it.


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## jaypes (28/5/14)

Rurik said:


> Umm there is enzyme's in the grain. It is how we malt it.


Correct, the OP was talking about adding enzymes - something that you dont really need to do if you have a proper formulated recipe that has enough diastatic power


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## manticle (28/5/14)

> I have a stick that I use to stir the mash, been used in my family for centuries!


Doesn't count if it's not Bavarian forest Henschenstaaten oak though.


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## jaypes (28/5/14)

I will have to check, but I believe it is


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## manticle (28/5/14)

All you need is a bit of help from Helga and it looks like you're good to go.


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## jaypes (28/5/14)

How did you know my wife's name was Helga?


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## manticle (28/5/14)

I have a network of spies.


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## Bribie G (28/5/14)

jaypes said:


> How did you know my wife's name was Helga?


Commiserations, hope divorce wasn't too painful.


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## jaypes (28/5/14)

Not really!

You can have her!

http://i987.photobucket.com/albums/ae357/horrible_helga/helga2new.jpg


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## manticle (28/5/14)

Discussion can happen in more sensible ways. Cut the name calling, work out the differences with civility and without aggression. The bonds that occur between finings and various particles are often chemical in nature. The renheinhenshgibottenlawen thing is just a thing that most people misunderstand.

To help the op - who wants to buy some cheap, feed grade unmalted barley, add some special 'enzymes' and try and make beer in 5 minutes?


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## Ducatiboy stu (28/5/14)

manticle said:


> To help the op - who wants to buy some cheap, feed grade unmalted barley, add some special 'enzymes' and try and make beer in 5 minutes?


You wont get that malt flavour & profile from just using enzymes.

Malted grains are toasted. Thats what gives you "that" flavour. The slight caramelising in pale/pilsner malts to full on caramel in xtals.


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## Not For Horses (29/5/14)

Ducatiboy stu said:


> You wont get that malt flavour & profile from just using enzymes.
> 
> Malted grains are toasted. Thats what gives you "that" flavour. The slight caramelising in pale/pilsner malts to full on caramel in xtals.


The good doctor Maillard will be sad that he didn't get a mention. He too plays a key role in beer flavour and is very hard to find in raw barley.


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## Ducatiboy stu (29/5/14)

We only talk beer here. 

Using raw grain & added enzyme is not going to give you the best beer as you wont have flavour compounds that make beer so yummy. You would end up with bland boring beer.......ie Corona


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## old mike (29/5/14)

I was not advocating the use of enzymes for any other reason than mashing, just explaining why I was interested in using them.


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## philmud (29/5/14)

For the sake of playing devil's advocate, could the use of enzymes not allow a brewer to bypass the steeping and germination phases of malting, but allow the "maltster" to toast the barley to achieve flavour? I can see problems with this process, the least of which is not that inexperienced maltsters would find it hard to predict the colour/flavour profile of their grains, but is there any reason it wouldn't work?


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## Mardoo (29/5/14)

Interesting. You couldn't create crystal-type flavors by toasting the barley. You have to malt the grain to get the sugars that allow caramelization. Other than that I'm now growing curious to see what flavors one COULD achieve.


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## Not For Horses (29/5/14)

It would work, but you would not get the same flavours because the components that take place in chemical reactions to produce flavour compounds are different.
During malting, the enzymes in the grain get to work converting complex starches, carbohydrates and proteins into simpler starches, carbohydrates, amino acids, lipids, some reducing sugars and a few other bits and pieces.
Free amino nitrogen (FAN) is also increased during malting which is a building block later on for ester production.
Amino acids and reducing sugars are consumed via Maillard reactions to produce melanoidins which we all know and love for that rich 'malty' flavour that they bring. Melanoidins are also responsible for some colours too.
Total soluble nitrogen is also higher using malt. Yeast like nitrogen.

So yes, it is possible to make beer with only raw barley. But it won't be the same beer.


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## TimT (29/5/14)

Aren't these enzymes mainly intended for those times when you want to do a mash with non-barley grains, ie, ones that will give you sugars if you add an enzyme but which don't have the enzyme present in the grain naturally? I'm thinking stuff like sorghum beer, millet beer, quinoa beer, etc. (Happy to be corrected if some of those grains do contain a suitable enzyme).

I'd always assumed the amylase enzymes were always present in the barley and stayed there during the malting until it became useful in the mash; now, if I read comments on this topic correctly, it would seem I have been mistaken. So does the malting actually *create* those enzymes?


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## Not For Horses (29/5/14)

I've malted sorghum and brewed with it. It definitely contains enzymes.


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## philmud (29/5/14)

Mardoo said:


> Interesting. You couldn't create crystal-type flavors by toasting the barley. You have to malt the grain to get the sugars that allow caramelization. Other than that I'm now growing curious to see what flavors one COULD achieve.


What if you exposed a proportion of the grain to enzymes and then toasted them? I'm still playing devil's advocate, but it seems to me that exposure to pre-existing enzymes would be a more efficient way of producing sugars than steeping and germinating grain. Presumably one could learn to mimic the idiosyncratic flavours that are produced through the traditional malting process.

Off topic: I bet this isn't the first or last barney that the Reinheitsgabot has caused.


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## Not For Horses (29/5/14)

You could expose the grains to those enzymes but they will be looking at complex starches that are locked away covered in a skin of beta glucans and other stuff. What they really want is simple starches to munch on.


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## old mike (29/5/14)

Malting naturally produces enzymes neccesary to convert the starch from unmalted grain into sugars. When chocolate malt is used, the temperatures needed to roast the grain drastically reduce the DP necessary for conversion. Enzymes would allow you to keep the flavor and provide the conversion required.


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## Not For Horses (29/5/14)

old mike, do you mean using, for example, 90% raw barley, 10% chocolate malt and enzymes?
This would still not taste the same as 90% malt and 10% choc.


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## bradsbrew (29/5/14)

Fairly big clean up. This is in the technical area please keep things reasonably on topic. Difference of opinion is fine and creates good discussion. Let's leave the personal insults out though.

Cheers


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## Mardoo (29/5/14)

Prince Imperial said:


> What if you exposed a proportion of the grain to enzymes and then toasted them? I'm still playing devil's advocate, but it seems to me that exposure to pre-existing enzymes would be a more efficient way of producing sugars than steeping and germinating grain. Presumably one could learn to mimic the idiosyncratic flavours that are produced through the traditional malting process.
> 
> Off topic: I bet this isn't the first or last barney that the Reinheitsgabot has caused.


if you did it with rolled and soaked grains it might get you some sugars. Wouldn't work with whole corns though, as NFH pointed out.


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## jaypes (29/5/14)

I read somewhere that munich was the highest kilned grain to be used as a base malt due to dimished enzyme level / DP


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## lukiferj (30/5/14)

bradsbrew said:


> Fairly big clean up. This is in the technical area please keep things reasonably on topic. Difference of opinion is fine and creates good discussion. Let's leave the personal insults out though.
> 
> Cheers


Looks like there's more work to do


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## bradsbrew (30/5/14)

lukiferj said:


> Looks like there's more work to do


PM sent to offenders.


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## Kodos (30/5/14)

Enzymes are frequently used in commercial brewing to make up for a high percentage of starchy adjuncts - if you were to try and replicate one of these beers it would be a good way to go, IMHO. (And I'm not about to weigh into a debate on why someone might want to do this, each to their own)


Likewise something like Chicha - the corn-based fermented "beer" from Peru needs enzymes (unless you want to chew and spit all your grist). 

As far as malting delivering a lot of the flavour, unmalted grains can give their own, different flavour, worth experimenting with.

I've come across a few brewers who've wanted to brew a beer with grain off a family/friend's farm - enzymes would enable this without having to DIY malting.


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## Ducatiboy stu (30/5/14)

Question.

Do enzymes muliply in the mash or is there only a set level ( with regard to malt type ) 

Would you need more munich than say a high enzyme ale/pilsner malt to convert the same amount of grain in the same time period.


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## Rurik (30/5/14)

I think enzymes production finishes once germination is halted.


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## Kodos (30/5/14)

My (admittedly limited) understanding is that enzymes do not "reproduce" as yeast does. They denature, and go the other way.

This is why grains come with a rating for enzyme levels (or diastatic power, measured on the Lintner scale), and you'll need a certain amount to mash a certain amount of starch.

for example, pilsner malt can convert about four times its own weight, but malts like Munich or Vienna only just have enough diastatic power to convert themselves. There are calculators around to help work out the diastatic power of your grist. If you were trying something experimental where the diastatic power was too low, commercially produced enzymes could help get you over the line.

I've sometimes wondered if enzymes could be used to good effect in extract brewing - if you wanted to go all malt, for example, but wanted a drier beer than malted extract would let you go (I think many extracts are made highly dextrinous so extract brewers can "top up" with simple sugars). You could mix the extract with water, warm to the temperature best suited to the enzyme (it might or might not be normal mashing temps, I'd have to check the manufacturer's specs) add the enzyme and let it do its thing. You could then heat it up above "mash out" temps to stop it converting too much, and proceed as normal. A mini-mash without the mess, perhaps? (I like the grain/mess etc tho  ).


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## old mike (30/5/14)

Does anyone know where to obtain enzymes neccessary for mashing?


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## Ducatiboy stu (30/5/14)

old mike said:


> Does anyone know where to obtain enzymes neccessary for mashing?


From malted barley.........


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## old mike (30/5/14)

Would have been nice to get a serious answer for a serious question, but I guess it doesnt take much to get you guys OT on this forum


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## TimT (30/5/14)

I'll cop that since I love going OT. But Stu did give a serious answer. That's where the enzymes come from: hold the malted barley in water at around 65-68 degrees C and you'll get plenty of enzymatic action. That's why when you want to get sugar from other grains that don't have enzymes in them , it's often recommended you add them to a malted barley mash.

Enzymes can also be found at some brew stores, QED.


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## Parks (30/5/14)

It could be that you use 50-50 malted base malt with your unmalted barley?


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## old mike (30/5/14)

TimT said:


> I'll cop that since I love going OT. But Stu did give a serious answer. That's where the enzymes come from: hold the malted barley in water at around 65-68 degrees C and you'll get plenty of enzymatic action. That's why when you want to get sugar from other grains that don't have enzymes in them , it's often recommended you add them to a malted barley mash.
> 
> Enzymes can also be found at some brew stores, QED.


This is what I have been doing to date, I was looking at alternatives other than paying around $50 per 25kg for malted grain


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## TimT (30/5/14)

What are you brewing with?

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, another method is chew and spit; human saliva has an enzyme that breaks down starch into sugar. Hence chicha, the corn beer, others mention. When you boil the wort it will kill off the bugs you've added to the beer.


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## Ducatiboy stu (30/5/14)

old mike said:


> Would have been nice to get a serious answer for a serious question, but I guess it doesnt take much to get you guys OT on this forum


I was being serious. This is why bourbon makers use malted barley in their corn mash, it's the malted barley that provides the enzymes to convert the corn starch.

You can buy enzymes to add to the wort that helps break up the sugar chains to allow the yeast to consume all the available sugar. These give you "Dry" beers, like Hahn Super Dry, Tooheys Extra Dry...etc.

Different enzymes do different things.


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## Mardoo (30/5/14)

There are enzyme producers in Australia who make the enzymes the commercial brewers use, as well as for many other uses. You should be able to find them from a web search. One of their chemists came to a Melbourne Brewers meeting to talk about enzymes in brewing, but I can't remember the name of his company. Yob may remember.


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## lukiferj (30/5/14)

I don't know if you've seen the episode of brew masters where they make chicha but you need to chew a fair amount. Not something you could do on your own.


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## TimT (30/5/14)

Yes, apparently it takes hours. Stephen Harrod Buhner in his whacky but interesting book _Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers _recommends it as a fun family activity. Everyone sits around, cracks jokes, spits....


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## Ducatiboy stu (30/5/14)

old mike said:


> This is what I have been doing to date, I was looking at alternatives other than paying around $50 per 25kg for malted grain


Thats a good price. 

Is it going to be cheaper to buy unmalted good quality grain and seperate enzymes...

Sure, you can buy cheap stock feed, but will it give you what you want.


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## lukiferj (30/5/14)

Ha ha family time. 

"But dad, my teeth hurt"

"Shutup and spit"


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## TimT (30/5/14)

Hey, that could be a good brew club meet. I'll bring the spit bucket....


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## lukiferj (30/5/14)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcf8WUB33hg


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## Rurik (30/5/14)

old mike said:


> This is what I have been doing to date, I was looking at alternatives other than paying around $50 per 25kg for malted grain


As a major contributor to taking this off topic, I will add something use full as a way of making reparation. The reality is (well when I looked into it a few years ago) purchasing the enzyme's is not a cheap thing to do. I cannot remember the exact price but we did not get a lot of change out of $1k for two of the smallest bottles that could be brought. Not really that cheap when you look at it like that. Yes there are some reasons why you would use it rather then malt but that does not make it a cheap process, which is what I think you are after.

It has also been addressed in other places but there is more flavor in the malt for the process then what comes from the raw grain and these flavors contribute significantly to the wort that is made. Even if you process the wort further (under the right licensing conditions) after fermentation there is still flavors that carry across from the malt that wont be there in raw grain. If the flavor is not important because of the processing makes it super concentrated you would be better off just fermenting cane sugar. If you want some flavor but don't care for the subtleties you would still be better off using a blend of malted grain and cane sugar rather then mucking around with enzyme's. Having said that you can use un-malted adjuncts in fairly high proportions if used with the right sort of base malt.

What you need to remember is that beer or any other grain base beverage is more then the sum of the raw ingredients going into it. There is the process as well.


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## Kodos (30/5/14)

Parks said:


> It could be that you use 50-50 malted base malt with your unmalted barley?


This works.

Dry stout is (depending on recipe) about half pale malt, unmalted oats (usually rolled oats) and black roasted barley (again, not malted).

It came to be this way because breweries used to pay tax on how much malt they used. so to cut costs, they used high percentages of unmalted grains.

White Labs sells a range of enzymes, I'm sure many are available through home brew stores if you ask.

I know a brewer who made a batch of Chicha with enzymes, don't know what it cost, but it wasn't the $1000 mentioned previously (unless it was meant to be $1 per kg?). That could have been for enzymes in commercial quantities tho.


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## Rurik (30/5/14)

Kodos said:


> This works.
> 
> Dry stout is (depending on recipe) about half pale malt, unmalted oats (usually rolled oats) and black roasted barley (again, not malted).
> 
> ...



No these were quite expensive but they were for a specific function and the minimum buy was quite high. What price were they and what size vials? We had two 1l bottles for that price. A whitle lab vial is 35mls so you are looking at 28.5 units to be talking about the same volume which is going to be betweeen $10 and $20 per unit or $280 to $560 per L. It is not so cheap when you look at it like that.

So lets say the product is retailing for between $10 and $20 a vial and the enzyme needed for this application (WLN - 4300) has a dosing rate of 300-40mls per ton of adjunct. The price of the enzyme per brew (50mls or 2 vials per batch) is going to be between $20 and $40 for 25L of a standard 11p wort. So that is going to cost $25 -$45 to use unmalted grain in a brew. The OP is saying that a 25 Kg sack is costing $50 which could make the same volume & gravity of wort for $10. Trying to go the cheap path is not so cheap, the OP would be better off to go a blend of malt & grain but depending on what that is it can be a lot of frigging about.


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