Education time! Tannins - what even are they?

[TimT]

I don't put my plastic esky over an open flame...

Point.

I guess I was assuming they'd go for the easiest source of heat, ie, fire. But that's a simplistic assumption as I've heard of a number of early mashing techniques. Pouring in amounts of boiling and cool water, for instance.

They certainly did have metal though, some which would have been used to cook stuff over an open flame.

 

[JDW81]

If you BIAB, I've heard squeezing the grains can extract tannins held by the husks? If 90 degC extracts tannins, is this BIAB claim a myth or miscategorisation of tannins?

Tannin extraction in brewing is more dependent on pH than temperature, otherwise every decoction mash you do would end up full of tannins. Presuming you're pH is correct, the tannin extraction shouldn't be an issue. Surely squeezing a BIAB bag would extract no more tannins than stirring your mash if you're a batch sparger (and every batch sparsger I know is a dedicated stirrer)?

That is at least my basic understanding of it anyway.

JD

 

[Greg.L]

With red wine the tannin and flavour mostly come from the skins, with apples it is in the juice. Some of my crabapples are so tannic when raw they strip the saliva from your mouth, leave your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth. When juiced and fermented the tannins are a lot less ferocious. Perry pears can be very tannic, they were used in the tanning industry. The pulp is macerated for a day before pressing to reduce the bitterness from the tannins. Red wines are fermented with the skins to extract the tannins, smaller berries have more flavour and tannin because they have a higher proportion of skins. This year the drought caused a lot of very small berries, yields were way down but the quality will benefit. My vineyard produced very small berries this year, there was very little free run juice because it was all skins. Just as well, the autumn was too cool and cloudy to ripen the grapes well.
Sunburnt chardonnay bunches can have an unpleasant bitterness, you can oxidise the juice to precipitate out the tannins before fermenting.

Wattles produce a lot of tannin so a few branches of wattle might add tannin to your beer. Don't blame me if it doesn't work.

 

[Mardoo]

Mardoo you're blowing your n00b cover.

Information is not the same thing as knowledge I know a bit about wine. I want to brew great beer.

 

[Mardoo]

Dunno about an oak mash tun - you'd have to put it on an open flame, yes?

Wouldn't oak barrels, at least for wine, tend to absorb tannins from the wine too? So in one sense their flavour would get sharper?

Hot rocks. And I don't mean The Stones