Hot answers tagged mashing
7
There's a very good explanation of the whole detailed calculations here
...but the sum of that is basically this:
For most purposes, a good ratio is to use 1.25 Qts. per pound of grain (0.3125 gal/lb.)3.
So that would be about 2.6 L per 1 kg (thanks @Paolo for the correction)
You will then sparge with enough water to get it to your desired volume, ...
7
Sometimes just blowing into your hose connected to the mash tun is enough to get the mash unstuck. (When brewing on a larger scale, you can inject it with compressed air.)
Your next option, should that not fix things, would be to increase the temperature of the mash. Since most homebrewers mash in plastic coolers, directly adding heat often isn't an ...
4
Some specialty grains (e.g. dextrin/cara-pils) need to be mashed. These need to be mashed, because they require a chemical reaction to take place to be useful.
Some (e.g. crystal) need only to be steeped, but can also be put in the mash. These do not need a chemical reaction to take place to be useful, they just need to have the chemicals in them extracted ...
4
There are a lot of factors that affect the amount of water used for mashing: batch size, evaporation rate, equipment loss, grain absorption, etc. You're best to start with the amount of beer you want to make and work backwards from there. There are plenty of online calculators that will do the math for you.
If you don't know the values for some of the ...
4
The step mash procedure described above is really not necessary any more. With today's highly modified malts, almost any recipe can be made with a single infusion mash. The reason for this is that the maltster has in effect done the first step for you by making sure the malt is highly modified. The eliminates the need for a low temperature protein rest. ...
3
I just let it boil down for about 1 - 2 hours before I began my hop
additions. [...] but what is the normal method for correcting an under-shot
pre-boil gravity?
Boiling for 1.5-2 hours is quite common. It sounds like the advice you got from Beersmith was correct. Your pre-boil volume is usually about 1.2-1.5 times your expected volume into the ...
3
The mash temperature specifically doesn't really make for a sweeter beer. While adjusting mash temperature allows the brewer to control the balance of simple (fermentable) sugars and dextrins (unfermentable), increasing either doesn't produce a sweeter beer:
increasing simple sugars doesn't make the beer sweeter - primarily any sweetness from these sugars ...
3
My understanding of "synonymous" is that it means "equivalent to". Therefore clearly no, "dry" is not equivalent to "low FG" which is not equivalent to "drinkable".
However, they may well be related since low FG correlates with light body which can aid in drinkability. Similarly, if you like dry beer then you'll find it drinkable.
And why exclude ...
3
In my own experience, "dry" and "low FG" are completely unrelated. This surprised me at first, but there are a lot of other factors besides FG that determine the 'dryness' of the beer.
Right off the bat, the amount of hop bitterness counterbalances the sweetness. Likewise, any astringent character from the mineral qualities of the water will start chipping ...
3
The words may get frequently overloaded, but they actually all mean different things. I'll attempt to explain below.
Dry(ness) -- Tends to refer to the amount of detectable sweetness in the final beverage. A beer that is hardly sweet would be considered dry. A dry beer could be correlated to Low FG, as little sugar would remain in the beer to taste.
Low FG ...
3
IMO, yes it's pointless. First, it's pretty much impossible to not get conversion given a sound recipe and hitting your mash temps. Second, as you've noticed, it's more than possible to get a false reading. I haven't done an iodine test in the last 13 years and haven't felt like I needed to do one.
3
Not meaning to be a wise guy, but that's kind of like asking "how long is a piece of string?". For one thing, adding carapils or malto dextrine might increase the body, but it won't necessarily mimic what happens at higher mash temps. Also, it's going to be highly subjective, depending on your tastes and exactly what you hope to accomplish. Finally, we're ...
3
There are 2 reasons to adjust your water...to get the proper pH and to add minerals necessary for yeast health and beer flavor. To do the former, you can simply measure the pH with a meter or papers, then empirically add salts until you achieve the desired pH. You don't pretreat the water because it's the mash pH you're concerned with, not the water pH. In ...
3
If you use corn meal, you'll need to do a cereal mash to gelatinize the starches before adding it to the mash. I tend to use instant grits or polenta so you can skip the cereal mash. At one of our club's Iron Brewer contests, I made breakfast cereal the secret ingredient. The contestants got cocoa puffs, Fruit Loops, a cinnamon wheat cereal, and Lucky ...
3
Get to know your system
Starting gravity is one measure that helps you produce consistent beers. Suppose you made this beer again with the same ingredients, using the same process. All other things being equal, you should hit the same OG. Ferment the two batches the same way and you reproduce the original beer.
It is not necessarily an indicator that you ...
2
I use flaked maize (corn), flaked oats and flaked barley in a couple different recipes.
I just put them right in the main mash mixed in with all the grain. I have even put them through the mill a couple different occasions by accident without ill effect. I do tend to add 0.25-0.5lb rice hulls when using flaked oats to help with the sparge. But if your ...
2
Unless you are making a specific recipe that uses a lot of flaked grain such as a wheat beer, the flaked portion of a recipe is usually a very small percentage of the grain bill and should be considered more of a specialty grain contributing flavour, colour, mouthfeel rather than a significant amount of fermentable sugars. Assuming you are doing a full mash ...
2
Most single temps mash go for 60 minutes.
Convention for the minutes is how long something is boiled. SO a 60min hop addition is done once your boil starts. 5 minutes means with 5 minutes remaining. 0 means right as you turn off the heat before you start to chill.
A 90 minute boil would include 30 minutes of boiling before the hop additions start.
A 90 ...
2
The speed of the mash is mainly down to enzymatic activity, and this is influenced chiefly by temperature and then by pH. Naturally you don't want to change your temperature, so the next thing is to be sure your pH is within 5.1-5.5 pH.
As well as enzymatic activity, there is the time it takes for the enzymes to leach out of the grains into the mash liquor. ...
1
Note: I am not a chemist. My homebrewing understanding is along the lines of:
Mashing at a higher temperature will promote the alpha-amylase enzyme to breakdown the sugars, while mashing at a lower temperature will promote the beta-amylase enzyme to breakdown the sugars.
The alpha-amylase will produce dextrins which will contribute to sweetness and body.
...
1
Since you already have your wort, and know the volume and gravity, you don't need an accurate grain bill for that part, but just need to get the software to register 3.6 gallons of 1.034 wort. You can do it like this:
create a new recipe and set your desired batch size.
add 1 pound of base malt, e.g. pils malt.
Click "gravity" and enter 1.034 as the ...
1
The way I did it was to duplicate the recipe, adjust the volumes until the sparge volume on the first is 0 and the mash volume on the second is close to 0, then fiddle with the efficiency settings on the two until the estimated OG matched my measured OG. I think it ends up around 58%/25% efficiency for the first/second batches. Example recipe link here.
...
1
If you measured 190 F at any location in your Tun, I would expect the average temp to exceed 170 F.
Pumpkin is mostly water and I don't see it as a significant insulator.
Enzymes are little chemical keys that convert the starch in you pumpkins and grain into sugars that the yeast can consume. There are several families of enzymes and each can only tolerate ...
1
Usually, you're doing a 90 minute boil to decrease the Dimethyl Sulfide precursors. This is especially important in wort that uses Pilsener malt. I usually assume a 60 minute boil (I start counting after the hot break has subsided) unless the recipe calls for a longer one (i.e. it has pilsener malt).
I've seen it both ways, but usually, the time ...
1
I wouldn't assume a 90 minute boil - it depends on the recipe. Usually you want to boil that long to let some wort evaporate or concentrate to reach the target abv. The timing is when the wort begins to boil -60 min hop additions remain in the boiling wort for 60 min and it counts down until flameout. I would steep the grains for a minimum of 30 minutes, but ...
1
I do sometimes leave some of the grains out of the mash and steep them separately.
Why? My water has a quite low pH to begin with, and adding too many dark grains during the mash can acidify the mash too much, forcing me to use Calcium Carbonate (Chalk) or Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda) to bring the pH back up to the ideal mash range (~5.2 - 5.5 pH).
...
1
The pro would be if your doing a split brew. I'm going to try a split brown and robust porter and eventually try a brown and a dry stout. So when doing a split brew I'm going to start with a brown. Split half into a carboy to ferment and then steep extra carafa/roast barley in the remainder to create the other half of the split. At least that's the plan.
1
I can't think of any reason why you would ever need to do a separate steeping of grain. You are basically steeping the grain in the mash. Caramel malts are fully converted in the husks during the malting process and kilned with a moisture content of 50% which caramelizes the sugars inside, which means the sugars are ready to go.
So the pros to adding the ...
1
In one of the Basic Brewing Radio podcasts I listened to recently, John Palmer mentioned making an American lager with "corn meal right off the shelf" as an adjunct.
If I were in a pinch, I'd rather use corn meal than a breakfast cereal, which has dozens of ingredients, including butylated hydroxytoluene.
On the other hand, actually making applejack with ...
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