Mash Out Time?

[ricardo]

Had a bit of a disaster at the weekend with too much lactic acid in my sparge water and by the time i had corrected the pH i had ended up mashing out at 76 for 40 minutes. This followed a 90 minute mash at 65. I was just wondering if my beer which is a stout will have any off tastes? One plus point is my efficiency rose from 73 to 86

 

[razz]

Just means you had a slightly longer brew day ricardo. What did the wort taste like going into the fermenter?

 

[Yob]

At the July swap, we ended up with about a 4 hour sparge due to effing oats making for multiple stuck sparges.. was a top beer in the end (oatmeal stout)

all things considered, we actually ended up with some pretty amazing efficiency from that..

 

[ricardo]

Just means you had a slightly longer brew day ricardo. What did the wort taste like going into the fermenter?

nice and bitter but then i did use 340 grams of fuggles in the boil

 

[razz]

Sounds like all is good ricardo. As a point of interest what happened with the lactic acid and how did you correct it?

 

[RdeVjun]

Sounds just fine to me ricardo, perhaps we all need more disasters like that!

Should be quite OK to stretch out mashout, that process is aiming to denature or neutralize the enzymes which are digesting starches into sugar and once denatured, they stay that way- if the rest is longer than you intended, then it is no biggie at all. The higher temperature of mashout also helps liquefy the sugars in the mash, allowing them to drain a little more freely.

FWIW, I wouldn't fret too much over sparge pH, unless you have found a particular issue with your water?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I wouldnt worry about mash-out to much. All it does is stop the enzyme activity. I normally sparge with boiling water, not as a mash-out step but to help rinse the sugars out and make for easier sparging. Dont worry about using boiling in your mash as it wont harm your mash. By the 3rd sparge the mash only gets to about 80-85*c.

 

[RelaxedBrewer]

I normally sparge with boiling water, not as a mash-out step but to help rinse the sugars out and make for easier sparging.

You don't have any problems with extracting tannins? I thought above 80ish was the region you did not want to enter.


I have always spared at 78 because of this

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Tannins dont leachh until around 88*c. The ( very ) small amount of time that the boiling water is above 88* in the mash wont extract tannins.

 

[ricardo]

Sounds like all is good ricardo. As a point of interest what happened with the lactic acid and how did you correct it?

I had 8 gallons of water (2 gallons dead space) and added 1.5 ml of 88% lactic hoping to get from pH 7.5 to pH 5.5 at room temperature This was calculated on the bru'n water spreadsheet)
.
I got a reading of 5.9 which i thought was still a little high so put 3 tiny drops in and after i had cooled the water to room temperature found out that it had dropped to pH 5.

I got round the problem by guesswork pulling approx 2 gallons out and topping up with tap water, ended up around pH 5.8.

 

[ricardo]

FWIW, I wouldn't fret too much over sparge pH, unless you have found a particular issue with your water?

I'm pretty new to all grain and found that some of my early beers, especially pales had a really astringent after taste. I didn't really know much about water chemistry so looked at the bru'n water site and decided to give it a go. Have to say i've noticed a marked improvement.

It is a pain in the arse though pulling samples and waiting for them to cool down in the freezer before you can take a reading

 

[DeGarre]

" Many brewers believe that the purpose of this rest is to stop the enzymatic activity, but that is usually not the case as the alpha amylase is not fully deactivated until 176 *F (80 *C). The purpose of the mash-out is to aid lautering as hotter wort will flow more easily while still allowing enzymatic activity to convert any starches that might be unlocked during lautering [Narziss, 2005]. While this is of a lesser concern for the home brewer, a mash-out is still a good practice."

http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Infusion_Mashing