Decoction Mashing

[berto]

Hi all,
Put down my second AG today. Another 8 hour jobby. But included crushing grains and adjusting the mill to get a slightly finer crush. Hopefully get my efficiency up a little this time. Although from what promash is telling me at the moment ive passed the magic 75% so all's looking well right now.

However, due to my mash tun basically being a plastic box, it loses a bit of heat. I wrap it in towels and keep as much heat in there as i can, however some invariably escapes. To overcome this, ive done both of these AGs with a single step decoction.

In previous partials (3 or 4kg of grain each time) ive had reasonable results with single infusion, and tried a double infusion once. But I've just tasted my first AG after a week of fermenting, and there is a wonderful malty taste which i can only see coming from the fact i have done the decoction. I have tasted 2 other Kolsch's in the NSW christmas case (what i brewed in my first AG), and remember one was quite malty, and the other not so. So im not sure if the yeast is the perpetrator of this great taste, or if the mash regime has made the difference. Something i think i will have to solve over time.

Todays decoction in an English bitter seemed to provide a similar result, as well as some extra colouring to the wort. So need to remember in future to ease off a bit with the darker grains and let the decoction mash take cre of this.

I think in any future brews where i am trying to get a malty taste, i will be decocting from now on, however in a steam beer or similar i would give it a miss so as not to overpower the beer.

Does anybody else have a view either way as to whether the decoction proves a worthwhile step? I know it adds time, and also that extra time you find yourself having to be there and stir your slurry, but the results seem worthwhile to me at the moment.

Another question i have about decocting, is when i started out. The main rule was never boil grains or you will extract tannins. What stops them from being extracted during a decoction mash? Ive noticed no mouth puckering taste as yet, so think i am on teh safe side here at the moment.

I'll also attach the recipe for the Kolsch below incase anyone is interested.

Not sure if ive said anything specific enough here for anyone, but some feedback or experiences greatly appreaciated.

Cheers, Rob

View attachment Dekolsch.html

 

[berapnopod]

Another question i have about decocting, is when i started out. The main rule was never boil grains or you will extract tannins. What stops them from being extracted during a decoction mash? Ive noticed no mouth puckering taste as yet, so think i am on teh safe side here at the moment.

Tannin extraction is pH dependant. If your pH gets above about 6.0 then you're much more likely to have problems. Thats why, when sparging, its important not to sparge too much. If you suck out all the goodies from the mash and keep rinsing with water, the pH will tend towards 7.0.

When you do a decoction, you have all the grains and sugar in there, so the pH should be stable at 5.2 - 5.5 and boiling won't extract tannins.

Berp.

 

[Ray_Mills]

Hi Rob
Good to see your into your second AG beer, Its a lot of work but as you can see the results are good.
I have a few questions as well as some answers for you.
1. You must be the first AG brewer that I know of that has started off doing decoction mashes. Well done but you really could make the same beer just as well with todays well-modified malts in a single infusion mash.
2. The first thing you need to do when you starting AG is to work out your mash efficiency with your current equipment. This would take at least 4 - 6 batches to get it right. Once you know your mash efficiency then you can developed recipes using your current software. A 65% efficiency to a 75% efficiency is a big difference to the balance of the beer you want.
3. As far as decoctions go it really depends on the beer you are making, as far as the Kolsch you made thats fine. You would never want to make English Bitter as a decoction as it is not required, as you will get the malt/hop balance with a single infusion.
4. When you sit down and develope a recipe think about what you are brewing. Think can I make this beer ok just using a single infusion. If you think about it and do it, 99% of the time your beer will be just fine.
5. After 30 or more decoction mashes I really wonder why do I do it as my single infusion mashes are really good, then you get down to the debate on yeasts, and thats another story.
5. As a new AG brewer I would suggest you get your mash efficiency down pat, developed recipes with your efficiency and you will become a happy brewer without getting lost in all the tech stuff that goes around.
Cheers
Ray Mills

 

[homebrewworld.com]

Ray,
I agrre with your advise to the new AGner.

IMO, decoction/de-smockction.

 

[Ray_Mills]

Hi
Something I forgot to mention,
I have said it before and Wes Smith gave me the advice too late at ESB once,
1. Do not Start the Decoction mash in the 50's as it will make the beer too thin. He was spot on with todays malts.
2. If you want to do a decoction start at a mash in at 62C for 30 minutes, Take out 40% of the mash and boil it for 10 minutes only. Then mash in with remaining grains for the next 30 minutes and sparge at 78C for a slow 45 minutes.
Then again why bother.
A single infusion will give you the same results.
Well thats my 2c worth
Cheers
Ray

 

[berto]

Ray,
thanks for the feedback and answers. I also think theres a lot of white elephants flying around this place, and try to avoid a lot of what i think is an over emphasis on some very minor points. The only reason i went the way of the decoction in the first place was the temperature dropping problems caused by my tun. However the results were good, so im tempted to do it again, but at the same time i do really need some single infusion AG's to compare it to.

Your comment on the english bitter. Maybe i should have posted this last night. I made one today with a decoction. oops. Will wait and see if the malt overpowers the hops.

Wasnt overly worried on my efficiencies. Tried a few things today to try and pick it up. One was boosting mash volume from 2.5L/kg to 3L/kg, made the crush slightly finer, topped up my decoction as it lost a bit of water, and made it a bit bigger (I think last time i was too light on in what i pulled). I possibly sparged a little bit more water through today as well. I really do need to get something good for measuring so i can be sure of these things though.

At the moment however I'm happy to keep doing my own little thing and see if i can consistantly pump out some good quality beers.

If i remember rightly, youve won a swag of awards in previous comps? Gives me heart to see awards can be won without the need to get into all the technical stuff too much. After all im only here for a bit of fun.

 

[Ray_Mills]

Hi Rob
What I am suggesting is easy stuff, you can keep doing decoctions, thats fine. At the end of the day the most important thing you need to know with AG brewing is you mash Efficiency, no more.
Once you know what it is the sky is your limit. You will start making well balanced beers and you will make winning beers too.
I will tell you how to make winning beers
1. Know your brewhouse and its efficiency
2. Make a beer you really like AG
3. When its completed do a very good evaluation of it and be very critical of your beer
4. Make the beer again with the small changes you think could improve it
5. Evaluate and make it again.
6. Might take 6 batches to get it where you want.
Make sure the beer is within the guidlines for that style, use the best malts, hops and yeast with every batch.
7. At the end of the day you will have a winner.
That easy, in the mean time just make it fun.
Ray

 

[tangent]

i still think that's why so many HBers are still clutching to their cans of extract, too afraid to take the step, because of brewery envy - it's all HLT's, counter flow chillers and valves.
Single infusion and a bit of patience will still make some damn fine beers.
Onya Ray! Too right :super:
I'm grinning like a cheshire cat tasting each AG beer, even the experimental ones.
The latest Belgian almost induced a tear to the eye, I was that proud

edit - berto, my tun has a little bubble wrap around it (2 mayo buckets, until i make a trip to the Barossa) and about 4 inches from the top -my digi thermometer probe reads - drops maybe 1.5C over 60 minutes so i target 66C and let it fall to 64.5C. I'm still getting thick ales with a "not bad" efficiency. I read somewhere "Malt is cheap, add another 1/4 kilo of grain, no big deal" or something like that.

I'm keen to try decoction mashing and i salute your gumption, but I'll wait until I get my hands on some bohemain pils for winter.

 

[Ray_Mills]

Your spot on Tangent
I have had brewers come over to my place looking for the secret.
I just posted the secret
Ray

 

[Ross]

Berto,

most of the conversion happens pretty quickly, so don't be too worried about the temp dropping - just try & get your starting temp on the mark asap. a piece of polystyrene floating on your mash will help hold the heat, or get yourself a handheld immersion for quick temp adjustments...

Congrats & welcome to AG, there's nothing quite like it :chug:

cheers Ross

 

[Guest Lurker]

...and, its not that important to hold a constant temperature. What is important is to measure the temp in the same place, in the same way, at the same time, using the same thing. Then calibrate that measured temp to the taste of the beer. And you're away.

 

[Tony M]

Another question i have about decocting, is when i started out. The main rule was never boil grains or you will extract tannins. What stops them from being extracted during a decoction mash? Ive noticed no mouth puckering taste as yet, so think i am on teh safe side here at the moment.

Cheers, Rob

[post="102854"][/post]​

I was drinking in a little micro (250L batches) in Prague the other day and a little brochure they had described their mash as follows. "We add our grain to hot water to give 37C and slowly heat it to72C then boil for a short time." Presumably they are step mashing but what the boiling does, I have no idea. By the way, they open ferment at 10C and make a mighty mouthful of lager.

 

[sosman]

There is an argument that dropping temperatures can be a good thing. One of the brewers at our club who has one many gongs over the years does a mash routine that starts around 67 and then cools to low 60's over an hour. If you look at the function of the important enzymes in mashing, it makes some sense.

Me, I don't cool it that fast but I don't worry about a drop in temperature.

If you search around brewing sites for "denny conn" and "the great decoction experiment" or something like that you will find some interesting results in blind tasting decocted vs non-decocted beers.

 

[warrenlw63]

All I can add without opening another infusion vs. decoction debate is with doing AGs for the last 8 years is this;

Don't let anybody kid you that the processes are rocket science by any means anyone can do it without too much trouble at all. We're doing it with any bit of equipment we can get our hands on and inprecise methods and making beers every bit as good as if not better than some multi-million dollar commercial conglomerates.

My opinion of decotion is if you can be bothered investing the extra hours in it it's your call. My experiences with it is that the difference achieved isn't really worth the extra time and arseing around. As I said though if that's what you want to do go for it. As others have stipulated today's malts are very uniform and consistent and will respond to a host of abuses. With some malts you may even be doing your beer harm with decoction mashing.

Small temp drops are going to do nothing. Get your strike temperature as close to perfect as you can and most of the work will occur in the first 15-20 mins of the mash.

In some ways I disagree with some of the others. That said they're going about it the right way in some ways and my ways can be a little careless.

I personally am a little guilty of poor note and record taking and just enjoy making beer in general. To be brutally honest after all the beers I've made, I'm pretty certain I've never made the same beer twice. While others enjoy this to me this is adhering too much to conformity. :lol:

Would an artist paint the same pic twice? :unsure:

Enjoy it all for what it is... Doing it your own way.

Warren -

 

[WillM]

Thanks for all the comments, great reading.

I can contribute a little bit of advice that is do what suits what you have (equipmewnt wise) and what you have planned for the day (other than brewing).

For example when I mash in the kitchen at my place (a small unit), my hot water temperature varies between about 62C & 70C. I'll add about 10l and see what my grain temperature is. If I'm lazy (or have other things to do) I'll boil the kettle, add the boiling water and bring the mash up to the strike temperature. If on the other hand I'm a bit bored and feel like boiling hot liquids (which for some reason I quite enjoy), I'll do a decocotion.

When I brew at my brother's place, I get the water at the correct temperature (in my case 74C) and add the whole lot to my mash tun to get the desired strike temperature - much more professional, but really it's beacuse I have a large boiler over there that I don't have at home (and we will sit around drinking a few beers, cooking a bbq while the mash is just sitting there).

So, use what you have, play around and enjoy it.

 

[colinw]

i still think that's why so many HBers are still clutching to their cans of extract, too afraid to take the step, because of brewery envy - it's all HLT's, counter flow chillers and valves.

Abso-friggin-lutely. Keep it simple! For a mash-tun a simple plastic bucket with a camping mat for insulation, or a modified esky, will do the trick nicely.

My bucket-n-spoon (tm) brewery makes great beer, and there isn't a fancy fitting, whirligig sparge arm or multi-dial read-out in sight!

Minimal but complete all-grain system:

1. Something to mill the grain, or ask the HBS to do it for you. Most people I know use a cheap Porkert mill. I have a phillmill, but that's a luxury.
2. Something to heat strike & sparge water in. I use a 30 litre food grade bucket with a 2000 watt element.
3. A mash/lauter tun. Yet another plastic bucket, with a camping mat from Overflow or Crazy Clarks as insulation. Duct tape to hold it on. My mash tun is my original Coopers fermenter from Big-W. I have a hunk of styrofoam cut to a circle which I push inside down to the grain bed - total temperature loss over a 90 minute mash is only about 1 degree C.
4. Something to run sparge water from - a fermenter will do nicely. I use the fermenter I'm going to use for the batch as my HLT. After I'm done sparging I sanitise it with iodophor while the wort is boiling. Don't bother with sparge arms or such crap. A simple tube from the HLT into a a submerged tupperware jug which prevents the sparge water digging a hole in the grain bed. The same tupperware jug serves for recirculating the runoff.
5. Something to boil wort in - the 30 litre bucket with element which I use for heating strike/sparge water does double duty here.
6. Some sort of chiller. Immersion, made with soft drawn copper tube from Bunnings will do fine. Wind it around a corny keg to get good dimensions. 9 metres is long enough to get decent chilling.
7. Some way of getting wort from the boiler to the fermenter. A boilable tap, or just syphon! The tube used to rack the wort into the fermenter gets washed and sanitised by sitting it in the iodophor in the fermenter.

When I started off, 7-8 hour brew days were normal. With practice I'm now pushing the 5 hour mark. I don't want to make it any quicker as it would take away the relaxation inherent in mash brewing.

cheers,
Colin

 

[Jazzafish]

Nice one Colin,

Check out this link for simple all grain brewing:
http://cruisenews.net/brewing/infusion/
Make sure you look at the pictures too!

Cheers,
Jarrad

 

[Josh]

Good advice from all concerned. My 2c is this. If it feels right, do it. I wanted to do a decoction on my last pilsener but was told almost unanimously that it was good, but in general pretty pointless. I didn't do it that brew day, but I will next time I go for a pilsener.

You can make this hobby as simple or as complex as YOU like. Just have fun.

 

[Simon W]

most of the conversion happens pretty quickly....

Too right!
I did a 2gallon AG brew yesterday(only my 3rd) and after only 10-15 mins my stirring spoon was sticky as hell!! Surprised me a bit as the first two AG were not like that, but I had used different grain for them, Brewcraft pils I think, yesterdays was Joe White pils.

I had been wondering about the merits of Decoction mashing over step or infusion, so thanks to all those that posted.

Simo

 

[CHIEF4EVER]

My setup is pretty simple and easy for anyone to do. I converted a picnic cooler with a bulkhead fitting, a ball valve and a screen. As long as one preheats the cooler with boiling water, it will hold the temps very well. That is my mash/lauter tun. I use a large pot for boiling (aluminum, but it works great) and food grade bucket for fermenting. I also have a glass carboy for a secondary that I use for making lagers. Generally, I either do a single Infusion or a step mash for most of my brews. I did a triple decoction recently for my Hefeweizen and it turned out very well. Insofar as the debate goes (decoction vs. Infusion) I can only say that if you obtain the desired efficiency - go with what you feel most comfortable with. English malts should NEVER be decoction mashed as they are already heavily modified. I only lean toward decoction for lagers or other German brews to obtain the head retention common to these brews. I generally brew Weizens and Irish stouts but would welcome any input from you folks on brewing Aussie style lagers as I am fond of them and would like to try to brew one as authentic tasting as possible. Anyway, HAPPY BREWING!

Robert