Polenta - Is It Ready Yet?

[Thirsty Boy]

nah - just mix it with your grain and call it part of the grist when you are calculating strike temp.

 

[Fourstar]

You are correct, polenta is just corn, the starches in corn gelatinise at higher tempertures than in raw barley or raw wheat, or the malted versions of either.
Polenta (uncooked) will probably, mostly, gelatinise at normal mash temperatures, not just plain will. And your mash schedule will make a difference to whether it ends up changing your fermentation profile or not too. Different info sources quote maize gelatinization temperatures at between 60 & 80C ... all cool if your batch is full of starches that gelatinise at 60... but if its 74-80 (which is what most of the texts say) then its only going to partially gelatinise in a normal mash.
The example of raw wheat is a bad one - raw wheat starch does (mostly) gelatinise at mash temperatures
Its my understanding that corn starch hydrolises into roughly the same proportions of glucose, maltose, etc etc as does malted barley, ie mostly maltose ... but it could be rice I'm thinking of. Its one or the other. If people are sure their corn mashes taste sweeter than barley mashes - it probably is corn that gives a higher percentage of glucose though. Glucose is considerably sweeter than maltose.
Uncooked Maize in the form of corn grits, corn flour, polenta ... should be pre-cooked and the best way to do that is with a cereal mash routine. You might be able to get away without it.. but you also might not. There are options to avoid a cereal mash - flaked, torrified or micronised corn (popcorn basically) and pre-cooked or instant polenta.. so there isn't even any need to bother with "might".. why would you when you can have "already done"??
But if normal polenta is working for you -- I ain't telling you to stop or that you're wrong. Its just that I wouldn't use it myself.

Cool, thanks for your input, i usually always boil my polenta in 4X its weight in water for 5 mins then topup with my strike water, get it to strike and dough in. So i get some pregelatinisation in my HLT before it hits my mash. I have only dumped polenta in straight once just to see how it goes, that was 500g in a 5.5KG grist or 10%. Anything higher i'd always precook it, like i do with my rice. So far ive always hit my gravity targets with polenta. I believe Denny Conn always dumps it straight in. I think i read it in a post he made on the NB forum.

Cheers! :beerbang:

 

[Elbow]

I was trying to track down some dried Polenta at the local supermarkets, no luck so far. They do have the pre-made gear in 1kg packages. If I needed 1kg of dried Polenta for the recipe (cream ale), can I use 1kg of the packet pre-made stuff?