Using enzymes for mashing

[old mike]

I have noticed that enzymes can be used for mashing grain,http://www.specialtyenzymes.com/ are thes available in OZ? they would save having to buy malted grain.

 

[Not For Horses]

As an aspiring maltster that makes me sad. I go to a lot of effort to develop flavour and colour in my malts.
Sure it can be done but there is so much more to building a beer from malts than just getting fermentable sugars.

Ed: being a little melodramatic but trying to make a point

 

[n87]

so my take on this, knowing that certain tastes come from the malting process... is...
could you use these to do a... say 5 minute 95% efficiency mash?
that would save some down time on brew day... just throw your grains in as the water is heating up... take grains out without turning down the burner and go strait to boil.
(talking BIAB... not sure houw it would work otherwise)

 

[manticle]

Tastes come from malting, mashing and boiling.

 

[Bribie G]

That's how they get maltodextrin amongst other products. Potatoes or wheat in, maltodextrin out. Similarly maltose rice syrup.

 

[jaypes]

According to reinheitsgebot whatever comes out at the end would technically not be 'beer'.

I like to think of my craft brewing as a modern take of a centuries old process, 4 raw ingredients go in, 1 masterpiece comes out.

No enzymes needed

 

[Bribie G]

Don't diss my Hahn Super Dry bro.

 

[philmud]

According to reinheitsgebot whatever comes out at the end would technically not be 'beer'.

So you eschew kettle finings, adjuncts, yeast nutrient, spices, etc too?

 

[jaypes]

So you eschew kettle finings, adjuncts, yeast nutrient, spices, etc too?

Yep

 

[philmud]

Yep

Oh well, most brewers don't place such arbitrary limitations on their input/output.

 

[jaypes]

Dont get me wrong I have used those in the past, I stopped using Irish Moss when I ran out one day - I changed my process a bit and the resulting beer came out just as fine as the previous batch.

I have about a dozen or so recipes that I stick too, nothing too fancy these days

 

[philmud]

Fair enough, if the styles you're brewing don't require anything further, then why add them.

 

[mje1980]

Yep

Do you brew according to the reinheitsgebot? Curious

 

[mr_wibble]

But then you could never make anything with Belgian Candi Sugar.
That would make me sad.

The British had their own beer purity law a few years later (maybe 80?).
Something about the addition of cobolt(?) making the beer darker.

I read about it in Pete Brown's "A Man Walks into a Pub" (review), or maybe it was "Hops and Glory" (review). Edit, another good review.
I very much enjoyed the latter book, although both were good.
My dad said he liked "Hops & Glory" too, and he's not a beer geek.

cheers,
-kt

 

[jaypes]

Do you brew according to the reinheitsgebot? Curious

Technically no as I do add dex or CO2 to carbonate.

 

[TimT]

Pretty sure they sell some of those at my local brew store (Cellar Plus). I thought the idea was to add to your brew so it worked in combination with malted grains - to enhance the enzymatic effect already present, in other words.

I find the results just in malting and mashing grain are pretty good anyway. You want another enzyme, spit in your mash. Seriously - we have an enzyme in our spit that breaks starch into sugar. Hence the weird 'spit' beers in South America (chicha).

I'm having trouble with a cheese enzyme right at the moment (chymosin). Trying to get this here nettle rennet I made a couple of weeks ago to work to curdle my milk....

 

[TimT]

I like the simplicity and the challenge of brewing according to the reinheitsgebot and admire the way it inspired the creation of several important brewing techniques.... but how far do you take purity? Sauergut is an interesting example - in order to lower the pH of their brews (perhaps because the water they were brewing with was not good) German brewers would set the beer aside in warm-but-not-hot water (about 47 C, I think, from memory) and a natural lacto-bacilli would go to work and sour the mash.

They may not have known it at the time - but technically the souring includes a fifth ingredient: lacto-bacilli. So is the brew that results a 'true' reinheitsgebot brew?

 

[manticle]

Reinheitsgebot originally didn't include yeast either.

 

[TimT]

Reinheitsgebot originally didn't include yeast either.

Hardcore, Germans. Hardcore.

Reminds me of the line: "Prove how bad-arse you are by drinking coffee without milk, sugar, water, or coffee".

I like Randy Mosher's argument that: "Yeast is more of a process than an ingredient." The same could apply to bacteria.

 

[n87]

I like Randy Mosher's argument that: "Yeast is more of a process than an ingredient." The same could apply to bacteria.

or even apparatus/tool