Changing mash temp for effect - hot weather beers

[Fraser's BRB]

Coming in to the hotter months (today was 36 deg here, but early for that!), I've been turning my mind to brewing something easy drinking and crisp on the finish. I have a pale ale recipe that I'm happy with that I mash at 66deg but it still has a reasonable amount of malt character and medium mouth feel.

Recipe is 83% pale malt, 17% light Munich. Hops are Amarillo and Galaxy. WY1056 American Ale.

If I was to reduce my mash temp to, say, 64deg, would this lead to a lighter mouth feel and more "crisp" finish (due to lower FG)? Is there a downside to this?

Or am I better off reducing the Munich or trying a different recipe altogether?

 

[Lecterfan]

For my 2c I am not a fan of dropping the mash temp too much. If I want a drier/crisper beer I drop everything but base malt (or a bit of wheat or rye can be good too). I would keep your mash at 66 and drop the munich. Keep the mouthfeel, lose some of the overt maltiness.

Edit: the 'downside' for me in the past has been that sometimes the 'lighter mouthfeel' from a <65c mash just ends up a bit thin and watery and ruins the beer (for me), even where considerable hop presence is...err.. present.

 

[contrarian]

Nothing wrong with nice dry beers and no reason they can't be tasty. A lot of my saisons finish around 1.002 and are great session beers for hot afternoons!

To get a drier beer try making at 62C and see if you like it. The main thing to consider is that if it finishes lower with the same OG it will be stronger so you might need to adjust the grain bill to account for that.

 

[manticle]

Changing the temp will change the balance.
Try it out, work out where your preference lies, then adjust accordingly as desired.

You can also look at staggering your sacch rest to get a beer with mouthfeel that finishes dry.

 

[Chridech]

Changing the temp will change the balance.
Try it out, work out where your preference lies, then adjust accordingly as desired.
You can also look at staggering your sacch rest to get a beer with mouthfeel that finishes dry.

Hi Manticle, can you suggest rest temps and times that might achieve this? Cheers.

 

[manticle]

It's up to you to experiment a little.
There are two starch conversion enzymes - alpha and beta amylase and they are a function of time and temperature (among other things).

Alpha works quicker and degrades starch to dextrins at higher temps (look between 65 and 75 with much above 70 rapidly increasing the denaturing process).
For Beta, your range is roughly 60 -70 with denaturing accentuated as you move above 65.

Obviously there is crossover so a long mash at say 68 would still allow beta to carry out some of its work.

I like a beer with plenty of mouthfeel so I usually target 62 - 63 for around 10 minutes then push to 69-70 for 40-50.

Increase the low rest if I'm making something drier like saison. Exact times and temps are somewhat dependent on style, yeast strain and preferred result.

Dark mild for me is simply one rest at 70 for only 30 mins for example.

 

[Fraser's BRB]

Cheers guys, I'll have a play with ingredients and temps and see what happens.

 

[Dan Pratt]

When I target 'crisp' for my beer that comes from lower mash pH.

You can remove the Munich as a first step and replace with Vienna. You can reduce the mash temp to dry it out leaving less residual sugars, 1010-1012 will be low enough.

To get that crisp finish a lower pH at 5.2 will create that result. I usually target that with a summer or golden ale more than the pale ales.

A lower abv also helps that crispness easy drinking beer, like 4.2% and 20ish ibu

 

[Coldspace]

Try a pale ale receipe using a lager yeast like s189. I did a 150 lashes lager, turned out great crisp with lots of flavour .

My usual 150 lashes on tap here with us05 I lightly dry hop it, turns out great. But I did a batch with s189 turned out awesome, also did a batch using kolsh ale yeast, it's was abit green at the start, but they have been lagered now for 3 weeks and are turning out wicked drops...

 

[SBOB]

stick with the same grain/hop bill and throw a saison yeast in

there's one idea