Not Getting Full Potential From Mash

[Fourstar]

TL makes some interesting points -

But you need to be a little careful about terminology.

Thanks for the deets Thirsty. I'm just a little concerned ive been overly aggressive with my stirring in between batches and possibly pulling across starch to the boiler etc. My eff is usually in the mid-high 70's.

A little :icon_offtopic:
As you are also into filtering, do you Polyclar often? All of the beers ive filtered so far have had some chill haze which is a little unfortunate. I was rambling recently that i hadn't noticed chill haze often in my non filtered beers but was thinking the tannins and proteins where floccing out over time so when the beer was young and unfiltered, the chill haze was there but was masked due to yeast.

I can't remember correctly but can oxidation from filtering cause haze? I'm very confident this shouldn't be the case as i purge the filter housing/lines with CO2 before i begin, but i just want to rule out this as a possibility. I can always push more CO2 through the housing on my next attempt to be sure.

Cheers!

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I know that when I filter a beer and it does end up with a little chill haze - it gives me the absolute irritations. I can see that its hazy, sticks out like anything. But other homebrewers stare at me like I am stark raving mad and make comments about the clarity of the beer.

So if it were my beer you were talking about, I'd say that all thats happening is that you have seen the difference between a truly clear beer, and a very lightly hazy beer - which you would have called clear before.

Oxidation can cause haze - but its primarily an aging reaction. Not something you would be likely to see in your newly created brew. Starch - if you were pulling across into your boiler, doesn't cause chill haze, and you said your beer clears up when its warmer, so you have chill haze not starch haze. Excess tannins might, I don't subscribe to TL's theory about stirring doing that - but if it did then that would more likely be your issue than starch.

Chill haze is a reasonably regular thing for me, no matter how I brew - because the malt I use is designed for sugar adjunct beers, so it has high protein levels. Oh there is stuff I could do... but to honest, polyclar works and is easy, so thats what I do. I use it on every brew - don't even wait to see if its needed, it just goes in.

Sure, if you have a bug up your rear end about brewing naturally with naught but the 4 gifts from Jeebuz and your mighty skill set - filtering and polyclar are probably the tools of the devil. Me.... I care about whats in the glass and couldn't give a rats how it was made. So it pretty much all goes through the filter with a handfull of ground up plastic for good luck - and now hazy beer is something that happens to other people.

TB

 

[murrayr]

hey ya'll,
did another all grain brew on the weekend putting all of your advice into practice and got my efficeincy at 73%. many thanks, cheers, murray

 

[manticle]

I was going to add to this thread but most of what I might have added has been added and said better. First thing I would have looked at though would be the crush - lhbs cracking doesn't necessarily mean that's not the culprit.

Here is an article on batch sparging which is essentially the method I follow. My efficiency usually sits around 70 which I'm happy with. My understanding is too high an efficiency can be problematic. If someone could clarify, that would be wonderful.

http://www.grainandgrape.com.au/articles_o...ch_sparge01.htm

 

[murrayr]

interesting read. i thought he didn't use much water for the initial mash though. 11 litres for 5kgs of grain? i always thought at least 3 litres of water per kg of grain? do you use about that ratio?

 

[manticle]

Between 2.5 and 3 kg generally. I wouldn't use any more than 3L per kg. My understanding is lower for ales, higher for lagers. So 11 Litres sounds pretty good. I'd generally go for 12-15 depending on grain bill (most of mine are closer to 6 kg) but it's not a massive difference.

 

[Mantis]

I used a mash tun for the first time last weekend and did what TB says is a flood sparge. I hadnt read enough on here and remember someone going on about not stirring the mash so I didnt.
I just drained the tun after the initial mash, with no mashout, then did 2 flood sparges and draining them straight away. Got a massive 62% eff

Just boiling my second mash tun attempt now and this time I mashed out,with a stir and rest, but could only get the temp up to 75. Then did a batch sparge with 78C water and stirred and rested
Will get back with the eff of this one later

 

[Mantis]

Well that got it up to 68%

 

[Tony]

I got 91% efficiency from my brew yesterday Thats into the Fermenter too.

 

[manticle]

I was under the impression that super high efficiency can work against you. Can someone with more experience please either elaborate or squash this idea if it's incorrect?

 

[Mantis]

I got 91% efficiency from my brew yesterday Thats into the Fermenter too.

Yes this is into the cubes.
New mill and new mash tun and will take time to learn them eh

 

[Frank]

I was under the impression that super high efficiency can work against you. Can someone with more experience please either elaborate or squash this idea if it's incorrect?

Measuring efficiency is measuring sugar extraction and potential alcohol. Some lines of thought are that the "flavour" compounds are diluted when you get high efficiency, ie less grain required for same volume of beer. Some people believe you can get a higher malt character at lower efficiency.
I regualarly get 80% efficiency to the fermenter and I believe get plenty of flavour.

 

[manticle]

Cheers.

 

[Tony]

Plenty of flavor here too. Trust me!

A while back i have Les the Weisguy who is a BJCP judge around for a beer at my place.

I had a simple pale ale on tap made with TF Golden Promise and Aussie Clucter hops. I got around 90% efficiency with that beer too.

I poured him a glass and turned around and he made a noise that i first thought was disgust but when i spun around ready to appolagise for the beer that i reconed was tops....... he was pouring it down his throat saying........ Id like to see that in a comp!

The way i see efficiency is that there is a certain amount of sugar that can be produced by the given amount of grain you use. It will all convert in the mash but the efficiency is the amount that you get in the kettle. If you get low efficiency, you leave more sugar in the grain than if you get high efficiency.

There for if you get lower ifficiency, you need to use more grain as you are leaving more behind.

I dont buy the more/less flavour thing. I get very high efficiencies from perfecting my crush, mash and sparge routines over many years and comp results tell me there is no lack of maltiness...... i usually get penalised for too much maltiness actually.

I just ectract more sugars from a given amount of grain.

Thats my point of view only. and we all know what opinions are like

cheers

 

[Tony]

Plenty of flavor here too. Trust me!

A while back i have Les the Weisguy who is a BJCP judge around for a beer at my place.

I had a simple pale ale on tap made with TF Golden Promise and Aussie Clucter hops. I got around 90% efficiency with that beer too.

I poured him a glass and turned around and he made a noise that i first thought was disgust but when i spun around ready to appolagise for the beer that i reconed was tops....... he was pouring it down his throat saying........ Id like to see that in a comp!

The way i see efficiency is that there is a certain amount of sugar that can be produced by the given amount of grain you use. It will all convert in the mash but the efficiency is the amount that you get in the kettle. If you get low efficiency, you leave more sugar in the grain than if you get high efficiency.

There for if you get lower ifficiency, you need to use more grain as you are leaving more behind.

I dont buy the more/less flavour thing. I get very high efficiencies from perfecting my crush, mash and sparge routines over many years and comp results tell me there is no lack of maltiness...... i usually get penalised for too much maltiness actually.

I just ectract more sugars from a given amount of grain.

Thats my point of view only. and we all know what opinions are like

cheers

 

[manticle]

Plenty of flavor here too. Trust me!

One of the people on this board whose opinions and experience on things I do trust pretty much as is.

It's just something I've heard and I had no exact understanding as to the reason or validity. I get 70 % on a regular basis and haven't been massively concerned trying to up it but it's just good to know. Still see myself as a noob in so many ways.

 

[Tony]

Mate i have done some hard thinking on the whole high efficiency / flavour thing and i honestly cant speak the truth....... i dont know scientificly if its true or not.

I can see a good basis for the theory, its makes sence thet if you use more malt you get more flavour, but the whole in the theory for me is your collecting only so much sugar from the mash so how is it going to increase malt flavour? These flavour compounds that are suposed to be a seperate entity????? i have seen no proff if this?

I would love to see some scientific proff though to clear the whole thing up! Untill then im a sceptic based on personal experience getting 85 to 90% efficiency every brew these days.

I speak from my experience with my brewing equipment. A big mistake people make is making a call on a subject based on results from there system. Results can vary wildly between different brewers equipemnt and methods.

cheers

 

[Screwtop]

Mate i have done some hard thinking on the whole high efficiency / flavour thing and i honestly cant speak the truth....... i dont know scientificly if its true or not.

I can see a good basis for the theory, its makes sence thet if you use more malt you get more flavour, but the whole in the theory for me is your collecting only so much sugar from the mash so how is it going to increase malt flavour? These flavour compounds that are suposed to be a seperate entity????? i have seen no proff if this?

I would love to see some scientific proff though to clear the whole thing up! Untill then im a sceptic based on personal experience getting 85 to 90% efficiency every brew these days.

I speak from my experience with my brewing equipment. A big mistake people make is making a call on a subject based on results from there system. Results can vary wildly between different brewers equipemnt and methods.

cheers

Spot on, agree Tony. My brewhouse eff is 84%, the mash eff is above that, no shortness of maltiness, depending on my choice of ingredients. Some malts produce more maltiness, and some yeast strains accentuate malt, some ferment clean with little flavour contribution. More to maltiness than efficiency, but that's our opinion eh! Those with lower eff% will have a different opinion methinks

Cheers,

Screwy

 

[under]

How do you calculate efficiency anyways??

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I'll try chucking a little pseudo science at it.

First - I dont think very many people believe it is efficiency in and of itself that is detrimental to maltiness - it is Sparging that is detrimental to maltiness. A good many people believe that the more you sparge, the less malty your beer will be - and because one of the more common ways to increase your efficiency is to increase your sparge volume... the notion of high efficiency started to become entangled with the notion of sparging being detrimental to maltiness.

Now combine that with the fact that sparging too aggressively can also cause the whole tannin extraction/astringency thing.... overlay it with efficiency = sparging.. and suddenly bright sparks all over the place are starting to decide that getting anything over X efficiency (ie anything good) must mean that your beer isn't as good as it could be.

The only explanation I have heard of, that makes this seem like a sensible proposition is this..

The compounds that contribute the "malty" flavours in beer, aren't really the sugars. They are predominantly maillard products like pyrozines, pyrols, furnans, furanones and melanoids and a swag of others including caramels that aren't made by pyrolisation but are catalyzed by amino acids.

So the two main things you want from your mash - sugar and malt flavour/aroma are different, and its feasible that they could be extracted at different rates during the sparging process. This seems to make a bit of sense because many of the maillard products are very soluble in water. Maybe they get dissolved and carried away first?? The majority of them already in your kettle, while you are still sparging away to rinse out the more stubborn sugars. So if you were to use more malt and sparge less - you would extract sugars less efficiently and not get a higher gravity.. but you would get more of the very soluble flavour and aroma compounds and thus a "maltier" beer.

And there is the fact that melanoidins are also produced in the boil - and a more concentrated boil favours the production of both melanoidin and caramels, while a dilute one eliminates the caramels - sparging a lot means a greater pre-boil volume and a more dilute wort... incapable of producing one set of the flavour compounds. More sparging would tend to increase the pH of the kettle wort.. which negatively effects maillard production in the boil - AND .. just to top it off, higher levels of polyphenols (as you might get if you sparge a lot) tend to drive the reactions in the boil away from melanoid etc production and towards strecker degredation - so you get less melanoid production and more strecker aldehydes.. which are bad flavours (mostly boiled off or blown off in fermentation though)

So - that's some of the science.

It seems like there is a pretty good argument to say that "oversparging" might well decrease the maltiness of your beer by affecting flavour production in the boil (high ph, dilution and polyphenols) and there is a hand waving but sensible sounding argument to say that its possible that the malt flavour and aroma come out first.. and that more sparging is extracting sugar but not flavour from your mash.

I believed this to be true for a fair while.. now I'm not so sure. I actually did an experiment as the result of the last discussion I took part in about this subject. I took 12 samples all through the sparging of a mash and compared the gravity with the colour. Both tested on lab equipment at work. Basically the object of the game was to see if the colour (for simplicity's sake I equated colour to melanoidins and melanoidins to flavour and aroma) came out before the sugar. I crunched the numbers and my results seemed to prove exactly the opposite. The sugars seemed to be extracted more readily.. but only just.

Now I don't have a crapload of faith in my experiment's validity for a normal mash.. it was a small scale lauter in a funnel type thing and I got very bad overall efficiency (only about 55%).. so I just don't know if that translates to what you'd see in a better set-up. I plan to repeat when I have my continuous sparge brewery running. Do it on a full size brew.

But - it was enough to convince me that it wasn't all that big an effect either way. So I no longer subscribe to the "more malt & less sparging = maltier beer" school of thought - But the above overly long post is my understanding of why some people do.

Thirsty