Mash Temp And Fg

[Millet Man]

Darren,

Some interesting points that tend to be irrelevant to making good beer.

Take it up one step! Do Macro breweries add DRY malt to their water? Mr Yes man.

[post="129490"][/post]​

As I recall they actually crush the malt in water to avoid oxidation so that the camel's urine they produce does not taste like anything other than - camel's urine. It has nothing to do with avoiding enzyme denaturing.

I make my own malt that is much lower in enzyme strength compared to barley malt. After only saving 1 litre of enzyme liquid per kg of malt from the full decoction boil that I need to do I still get 80% attenuation at a 65C amylase rest temperature. The full decoction would kill more enzymes than any drop infusion with 75C strike water.

You will kill some enzymes along the way but picking your mash temp will give you the required attenuation regardless of if you drop infuse, step infuse, underlet or decoct. All methods are a means to an end.

Back to hockadays original question in the thread.

I have only done one barley malt mash to educate my kit brewing brother (about 100 gluten free mashes for me) but in that case I did a similar thing in hitting a 68C mash temp for an IPA. It attenuated from 1.057 to 1.018 so not too different to what you achieved.

Simple answer is mash in at a lower temp if you want to get a lower FG. That's my experience and the experience of 99% of other mash brewers out there.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[hockadays]

Thanks Andrew,

Thats the same as Kong has had at 68degC so I think the yeast has done it's job properly. I normally mash at 66/67 and they always go down to around 1.010-1.012 so I'll know in the future what to expect at 68degC.

matt

 

[vlbaby]

vl,

I guess the difference it makes is, firstly efficiency, secondly the profile of the resulting beer. I bet fifty cents (yes some scottish heritage) that micro breweries have lower strike temps than the average homebrewer.
Finally, decoction works because you mash in (BTW 80% of the work is done in 10 minutes), then draw the thick mash (mainly grain) and boil then add it back to the soluble (liquid phase) enzymes.

What you are forgetting is that although the mash takes you 60-90 minutes is actually over in 10-20 minutes.

If you don't believe me just check it at 1, 2, 5, 10 and twenty miniute intervals. If needed plot the graph. Doesn't change much after 20 minutes.

cheers

Darren

[post="129516"][/post]​

Darren,

the first tens minutes of a decoction mash are most likely at 50 degC which is a protein rest. So during this first tens minutes your alpha amylase and beta amylase have done squat!

This is besides the point anyway. The point is that a small amount of enzyme denaturing will not result in poorly attenuated beer.
I would dare to say h34r: that most AG brewers do actually add their grain to the water, and have absolutely no side effects from doing this.

I would suggest that too high a mash temp ( due to a bad thermometer etc ) would be more likely the cause of the high FG's not the method of mashing in.

sorry for the thread hijack hockadays :unsure:

vl.



edit. removed all the obscenities

 

[Guest Lurker]

I always add the grain to the water and the enzymes seem to have done their job OK over 50 or so batches.

 

[Darren]

I always add the grain to the water and the enzymes seem to have done their job OK over 50 or so batches.

[post="129584"][/post]​

Yeah my first 50 or so batches I did exactly that too. The next 70 or so I found it was easier to underlet and my efficiency rose by 5 points.

cheers

Darren

 

[Darren]

Further to my post above re the curing of grains during the malting process, the grains are helad at 80-85 deg C from 4-48 hours.

I still want to know how a couple seconds or maybe a minute is really going to hurt?

Over to you Darren, and yes I can reference my information.

regards

Steve

[post="129515"][/post]​

Sorry Stephen I missed your post!

Its easy. Enzymes are a lot more stable dry than they are wet. The evaporation of the water from the malt also actually cools the malt. The kiln may be at 80 but the malt isn't. You want references?
With your analogy you wouldn't even need to mash the grain as the enzymes would have done all their work on the way up to 80


cheers

Darren

 

[stephen]

Further to my post above re the curing of grains during the malting process, the grains are helad at 80-85 deg C from 4-48 hours.

I still want to know how a couple seconds or maybe a minute is really going to hurt?

Over to you Darren, and yes I can reference my information.

regards

Steve

[post="129515"][/post]​

Sorry Stephen I missed your post!

Its easy. Enzymes are a lot more stable dry than they are wet. The evaporation of the water from the malt also actually cools the malt. The kiln may be at 80 but the malt isn't. You want references?
With your analogy you wouldn't even need to mash the grain as the enzymes would have done all their work on the way up to 80


cheers

Darren

[post="129588"][/post]​

Darren

I am fully aware that enzymes kick off with the addition of water and become more active. What I was trying to point out is that the temporary transit of the enzymes into a temp that may denature them is only brief and, like my finger in the candle flame analogy, will not kill them off altogether.

What you said in an earlier post, is that once above 70 deg the beta amylase is kaput! Some will be dead, however, some will survive and continue to perform their duty in converting starch into fermentable sugars.

The issue of adding grain to water or water to grain is therefore moot. I actually add a third of my water to the mash tun then half the grain, mix add another third of my water, the rest of my grain, mix and add the final third of my water. With this procedure I have been acheiving results around 80-85%.

For all you budding AG brewers out there, I say, go out and do it! Keep your gear simple, your process simple and you will brew great beer. Do not get concerned with things like efficiency, whether to add grain to water or water to grain or if your mash is a degree high or low. Do your first AG and enjoy the improvement in the quality of the beer. Do your next brew and fine tune your procedure. Again, do not worry about efficiency! Wait until you have done a couple of AG brews before you start fine tuning the efficiency side of things.

Best of all, go out and make some beer that you like!!

Steve

 

[smashed jaffa]

Snip:

"For all you budding AG brewers out there, I say, go out and do it! Keep your gear simple, your process simple and you will brew great beer. Do not get concerned with things like efficiency, whether to add grain to water or water to grain or if your mash is a degree high or low. Do your first AG and enjoy the improvement in the quality of the beer. Do your next brew and fine tune your procedure. Again, do not worry about efficiency! Wait until you have done a couple of AG brews before you start fine tuning the efficiency side of things.

Best of all, go out and make some beer that you like!!

Steve"

Well said Steve!! :beer:

I am about to do my third AG and am starting to get more interested in efficiency as I go along. But the thing that has got me to where I am now is great advice from more experienced people off this forum.

Mostly though I have tried to keep it simple and not get caught up with the finer points just yet.

Beer = Science + Art + Enjoyment! :chug:

Smasher.

 

[hupnupnee]

I have just had a chance to have a look at this thread, fascinating.

A point I think that Darren has failed to realise about the nature of chemical reactions and temperature. Heat is the kinetic energy of a substance where as temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy. The funny thing about average is that not all the enzymes are at that temperatre, in fact it would be fair to say in a system the size of a mash half the enzymes would be below a particular temperature and half would be above. Thus if the temperature is short lived, that is less than a few half life periods for that particular enzymes denature curve for a particular temperture, it would be reasonable to assume that a goodly qualtitiy of the enzyme would remain viable.

So unless the mash was kept at say 70* for a suffieciently long time (I don not know what the half life is for beta amylase at 70*) then there is a very good chance that a fair amount of bete amylase would remain viable. Further more in most mashing systems there is a significant gradient or irregularity in teh temperture through out the mash, so areas of hot and areas of cool. Areas with lots of good enzyme, areas of not much good enzyme.

The notion that all molecules of a particular enzyme are denatured instantly at a temperature of around 70* is ridiculous

My two bobs worth.

Floculator

Tim

 

[hupnupnee]

"Sorry" hence why the finger in the flame is such a good analogy





Should have added this as well

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/biology/enztech/temperature.html

for those that have nothing better to do with their time. Should be drinking or brewing beer!!! :chug:

 

[Randall the Enamel Animal]

The malts we use these days are bloody good, have very high diastatic power, you can bang them around and they work just fine. Like Wess said, if the brewery uses pre-milled grist and a grist case, grist goes into water and works just fine. Breweries as big as, say, Malt Shovel will mill on demand, mix instantly with water and pump the resulting slurry to the kettle. Works just fine. In our 6hl brewhouse, I add a bag of grist for every 50l of mash water and then trim the overall temp with the last 50l of water. Works just fine.

Don't get hung-up on getting better efficiencies, aim for a consistant efficiency and adjust up or down your malt weight.

Like Tim said, beta-amylase will not all instantly de-nature at the same time and there are things that can be done to protect enzymes other than temperature (liquour:grist ratio, pH, divalent cation concentration).

Get in, have a go, WRITE DOWN WHAT HAPPENED, have fun and always have a beer going when you're brewing.