Thoughts On Efficiency And Flavour.

[tourist]

At a club meeting this year, the guy (Michael??) from Baron's Brewing gave a talk on his brewing adventures. Having a yarn with him after the talk and the subject of efficiency came up - he also made a correlation between efficiency and flavour in the beer.

As a result, he shoots for an efficiency far below what he could potentially achieve so as to preserve the flavour. (I think his efficiency target was about 60-70%).

 

[THBF Wez]

I'm experimenting with lowering efficiency at the moment. My last brew (which is currently fermenting) I deliberately targetted 65% efficiency (normally get ~85%) to see if there is much of a difference.

 

[Sammus]

This is an ordinary square...

woah woah, slow down egg head!

...if we extend the square along the hypothetical "z" axis, it becomes a cube, or a "Frinkahedron", in honour of its discoverer...


:icon_offtopic: Sorry couldn't resist....

 

[mesa]

I think jjeffery has about the right of it. I can see an argument for altering the mash to favour maltiness by droping the efficiency (probably by mashing high, or fast), but I can't see an argument for an inefficient lauter (other than the pH/tannin thing). I you leave sugar in the mash tun you probably leave all the other flavour bits in there too.

 

[Darren]

Nah - I can squish it up to around 80% if do a standard two run-off batch sparge - With no sparge I am usually on about 75%

3-3.5:1 L:G - re-circulating mash (RIMS) - Mashout with enough water so that a single run-off will give me my kettle volume. More or less 75% into the kettle.


Newguy - My theory is that at 80% your dissolved solids will have a higher proportion of just straight up sugars than mine will from a 65% efficiency. More malt equalling more dissolved melanoidins etc etc.


TB

Hi TB,
Are you getting 65 or 75% efficiency from no sparge?

I suspect the differences you "observe" from your no-sparge beers is simply that the OG of your wort is higher at PITCHING (ie you have not diluted it with another sparge).

cheers

Darren

 

[Beerbuoy]

This is an ordinary square...



...if we extend the square along the hypothetical "z" axis, it becomes a cube, or a "Frinkahedron", in honour of its discoverer...


:icon_offtopic: Sorry couldn't resist....

I had a "Frinkahedron" on Sun mornin!!...............Oh sorry that was Frinkenheadache.....my bad

:icon_offtopic: Sorry me either

 

[jjeffrey]

Sorry for throwing in too much lingo, what I'm saying is that you get more maltiness at lower efficiencies because of more longer chain sugars that are present, which then get mucked with during the boil and also in your cube if you no chill.

I think jjeffery has about the right of it. I can see an argument for altering the mash to favour maltiness by droping the efficiency (probably by mashing high, or fast), but I can't see an argument for an inefficient lauter (other than the pH/tannin thing). I you leave sugar in the mash tun you probably leave all the other flavour bits in there too.

I agree. I don't think that inefficiencies resulting from a poor lauter will enhance maltiness, for that reason. It has to come about as a result of a lower conversion.

jj.

 

[Kai]

Newguy - My theory is that at 80% your dissolved solids will have a higher proportion of just straight up sugars than mine will from a 65% efficiency. More malt equalling more dissolved melanoidins etc etc.

Not sure if it actually works that way or not though - just speculating - its possible that by leaving behind 15% more of the sugars, you are also leaving behind 15% more of the flavour compounds. I just get a feeling that it isn't going to work that way. And it ties in with the idea that no-sparge brewers get "maltier" beers. I reckon (that if its true) its mainly because tehy simply have to use more malt, not because of some inherent feature of sparging that reduces malt flavours.

TB

I'll venture that if your efficiency is lower then you are leaving malt-flavour compounds behind as well as simple sugars. In fact, I'll take the stance that if your efficiency is lower then you will actually leave *more* flavour compounds behind in the lauter tun. I'll back this up with the hypothesis that flavour compounds are larger compounds than their sugar precursors and as such will be less soluble in water. Consequently, during the sparge they will be displaced from the mash in a slower manner than their sugar counterpart as they are less attracted to the sparge water's wiles.

On an alternate, more practical angle; a few years ago I took last runnings home from the mash tun of a then local micro brewery on two occasions. Both time I experienced fermentations with low original gravities, high finishing gravities and excellent malt flavour for the OG. Good anecdotal support for the angle I'm taking!

 

[Adamt]

I completely agree Kai.

 

[Adamt]

Actually, thinking about this a little more...

At lower efficiency, the full profile of sugars is easily dissolved, as there is a lower total amount of dissolvable sugars. At higher efficiencies, there may be a point where dissolution is inhibited due to the higher amount of dissolvable sugars and the simpler (and "plainer") sugars are dissolved in greater proportion.

If this is a possible mechanism; would an increase in sparge volume compensate?

 

[Kai]

Actually, thinking about this a little more...

At lower efficiency, the full profile of sugars is easily dissolved, as there is a lower total amount of dissolvable sugars. At higher efficiencies, there may be a point where dissolution is inhibited due to the higher amount of dissolvable sugars and the simpler (and "plainer") sugars are dissolved in greater proportion.

If this is a possible mechanism; would an increase in sparge volume compensate?

I think there's differences in assumption of what constitutes low mash efficiency. I'm working on the assumption that a low mash efficiency is always a complete to nearly complete conversion efficiency, but the inability to extract the full load of conversion products from the mash is what constitutes a lower efficiency.

 

[katzke]

Well first as other have tried to say efficiency has at least 2 components, conversion and removal. Notice I am not using brewing terms here.

Now if the malt flavor does not come from the sugar and just from what the warm mash water removes from the malt (like making tea) then conversion has little to do with it.

Consider what the big brewers have done with beer here in the USA. They make thin wort with lots of adjuncts to save a few cents, or put a different way they use less malt. I am sure any one of you that has paid the big price for a can of Bud will agree malty is not the first word you use to describe the taste.

Last consider all the malts we use that need no conversion. We use them to add flavor.

So Thirstys idea may be bunk, partly true, or spot on. It is an interesting idea that all things being equal two identical SG brews, the one with more malt will be maltier.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Ahhh - see how that lovely series of thinking about stuff would just get spoiled by doing something nasty like experimenting and testing.

JJeffries - gives nice thought process - and that might well be a good explanation of why you could get a more malty flavour out of a lower conversion efficiency, or even out of a mash with a higher proportion of longer polysacharides.

But thats not what I meant - I meant what Kai said. Complete (or at least good) conversion but a less thorough lautering process that leaves more compounds behind.

Kai and Adam make decent arguments for exactly the opposite of what I am proposing - in that they think sugar is dissolved and removed more easily than flavour compounds, and I am suggesting it could be less.

I'm not convinced either way really.

However - to go back to newguys boring "you could test that" suggestion - this could be even easier to test.

Melanoidins (which I think we all agree is what we are primarily talking about here) are responsible for colour as well as flavour. To see which is coming out of a sparged mash sooner, later or ever - you could compare tint to OG over a couple of batch sparges.

In a small mash (say a litre) you drain first running - record gravity and tint. Then sparge three or four times (batch) and record the gravity and tint of each runoff. Plot em on a graph and see if one or the other of gravity or colour is dropping off at a greater rate than the other.

Not a lot of data points - but enough to give a bit of an idea if there is any drastic difference. You could do the same by comparing gravity and tint at different stages of a continuous sparge - which would give a lot more data points.

I suppose you could always conduct two small mashes side by side - sparge one more than the other and compare the OG:Tint ratio of the two beers. But you would have to be confident you could conduct two identical mashes.

Hell maybe someone has already done it - I will search the interweb....

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Hi TB,
Are you getting 65 or 75% efficiency from no sparge?

I suspect the differences you "observe" from your no-sparge beers is simply that the OG of your wort is higher at PITCHING (ie you have not diluted it with another sparge).

cheers

Darren

Darren - I am getting 75% at pre-boil from no-sparge (give or take a couple depending on the OG) - My gravity isn't higher at any point. I am still getting the same kettle volume and gravity as I would be if I were lautering by any means. My total water added is exactly the same as it would be with a batch sparge.
29L into the kettle to yield 23.2L post boil (hot) after a 90min boil.

I didn't say I had "observed" any differences from no sparge brewing at all - I haven't particularly. I do it because its easy.

65% was a figure I had proposed I might try to drop my efficiency down to in order to try and increase the flavour of my beer. The problem being that seeing as I no-sparge brew already, I don't know how I would do that without simply leaving wort behind; and I don't know if the whole idea is bunkum anyway. Hence this thread to see what other people think.

 

[Millet Man]

One of my brewing texts has a nice graph in it showing the extraction of various compounds during the lauter over time and as I recall it isn't all equal (I'd get the book to check but it's all packed up as I'm moving house next weekend). Based on that wort where the lauter has been cut short will have a different profile (ratio of sugar, protein, tannin etc...) to a wort where the lauter has been taken to completion.

I mash at around 5:1 ratio and no sparge (mash filter) at work but mash at 4:1 and use a more conventional fly sparge at home, both methods make good beer but it's hard to compare the results as there's so many other factors between a 36 hL system and a 20 L system.

Without getting too scientific an easy test would be to make a mash and then collect the wort as per a partigyle, but getting half of the extract in each wort. Adjust to the same OG preboil and then proceed to make 2 identical batches and compare, that will show up any difference in the quality of early and late extract.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

OK, so I thought I would actually do an experiment. I'm in the middle of it now. Time to tell me if I have screwed it up.

Mashing 50g of pale malt (very fine grind - coffee grinder) in 125ml of water.

Using a TEB standard mash regime - This stands for Thirsty's Experimental Brewing and consists of mashing into a pre-heated beaker with hot tap water at 50-55C, putting it into my oven on the lowest setting (which averages abut 90C) for 90min, which should get the whole thing up to a mashout temperature over the 90mins, then filtering the wort through a paper towel.

I have rigged a funnel with a lining of tinfoil and put a pinhole in the foil, this is so when I filter the mash I can continuously sparge it over a comparable period of time to an actual homebrew fly sparge. It should (I tested it) runoff at approximately 25mins per 100ml and I want to collect about 150-175ml of wort. So 40ish minutes of sparging. I will use water from the kettle for the sparge to try and keep the temperatures up in the small uninsulated volume.

Wort will be collected into a series of 15ml test tubes, sealed and quick chilled in the freezer - they will be kept cold till I take them to work on Monday and run them through the photospectrometer and the gravity meter. Should get around 10 samples which will hopefully give us a decently indicative curve for both gravity and tint over the course of the sparge. I may even drop in the pH meter just for extra points.

It may or may not prove anything - but it is an absolutely gold plated opportunity to procrastinate for a few hours when I should be studying water chemistry. I will read Kunze while the mash is happening and pretend like its real work.

BTW - does anyone know where I can find nice diagrams of an ion exchange column?? Five different brewing text books and I got nothin.....

 

[dr K]

Some interesting thoughts here. Now for last 4 months I have been making low gravity (1035ish) beers and doing my best to get great flavour. Apart from the obvious things such a high mash temp i have found the best results come from a simple single malt grist (in my case Halcyon) no bittering hops and a shed load of flavour hops, I am a long way from getting it right but I feel that I am on the right road.
My gut feeling tells me that TB is correct in his assumption, I like a malty (not sweet...malty) beer and only expect 65% efficiency (based on PM/BS) at best.
Just a quick nit pick about melanoidans, the Malliard reaction produces more than just melanoidans, melanoidans are as the name suggests colouring agents, a biscuit for example browns. The brown colour is a result of melanoidans, the flavour howver is not (the result of melanoidans), the biscuit flavour is a result of the flavour agents that are produced during the Malliard reaction, notably pyrazines but others as well.

K

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thats exactly where this thread came from K - the notion of trying to extract as much flavour from a lower gravity beer as possible.

I was asked about the thread I posted discussing Ultra High Gravity brewing and its use in producing more highly flavoured "light" beers - and got onto the general topic of getting low alcohol beers with similar properties to higher alcohol beers.

We talked about UHG fermentations for flavour
Jump mashes for body and mouthfeel
What JJeffery said about the excess of reducing ends in longer sacharides also seems to mesh. The jump mash (or just a high sach rest) would then give a higher proportion of these sorts of sugars - and allow an increased mailiard reaction in the boil - perhaps a longer boil to take advantage of this??
You could also perhaps use an undermodified malt and mash with a nutrient rest to promote amino acid levels for the same reasons. Or just deliberately target a malt with high FAN levels.

I suggested that using more malt - but not going for high extraction - might result in a more malty beer. I was hoping that you could get another layer of increase out of cutting off a continuous sparge earlier, or perhaps a no-sparge brew - which might result in an uneven removal of flavour and colour compounds vs extract.

I was hoping that the colour compounds would give a good indication of what was happening with flavour - but of course you are right - everyone "says" melanoidins... but at least half the time they mean "products of the mailliard reactions". Which I had forgotten about and just lumped under the banner melanoidins.

Which is a bugger - because I did that damn experiment, And now I have 13 x 15ml samples ready to analyze. Oh well, it achieved the goal of avoiding studying water chemistry. And I suspect there will actually be a correlation between the colour and the level of flavour compounds... its just that now the idea of making a direct link is shot to bits... damn you and your knowledge of chemistry. Who the hell remembers pyrazines? Of course - now I will remember them, and thats damn good for my exam - so thanks.

I'll analyze the samples on Monday anyway - tint, PG and pH. It'll make for a nice graph, an excuse to post photos; and we might learn something from it after all.

Thirsty

 

[katzke]

Well if you are after more flavor and less sugar why not use a larger crush.

Would be easy to test with a small sample to see if color is the same for a fine crush and a large crush given the same mash.

I would think that if the color was the same then the flavor would be better with the larger crush because the sugars should be lower.

Least that is what everyone says that crush effects efficiency.

I am correct that you are looking for lower efficiency and make up for it with more grain?

This all is dependent on your idea that more grain with lower efficiency will give more flavor.

 

[Barry]

I recently made a Southern English Brown ale (3.8%) ( just bottled) and a Scottish 60/- (low 3's %)which I will bottle today. I have been disappointed with previous batches, rather thin.
The last too tasted far more "malty" with more body from the fermenter samples. Time will tell for both. While both had significant % of specialty malts and mashed at 69-70oC so did the previous attempts.
This time I increased all the malts by approximately 1/3 and no sparged ( first runnings*) twenty litres for each and added 10 litres of treated sparge water to each to bring each up to the my normal 30 litres preboil. 57-60% efficiency, usually 80%.
* lots of mash out water added to make sure to get 20 litres.
The 60/- might be too malty for style but not to my taste and some carbonation will lighten it.
I don't know if this helps.