I really don't get it /mashing/

before I decided to finally make my first all grain batch, I really have been reading alot, especially here, on homebrewtalk.com...

I payed attention, and really carefully studied the mashing methods and styles. all of them (or most of them) implied that one shout first heat the water in a l kettle to reach the temperature little bit higher than the strike temperature, and then move this water to a mash tun, mix with grain and mash for 60 minutes.

then sparge....


ok, I really have got into it, and made a plan how to do it....



BUT!!!


I ordered two ingredients kits, and equipment kit. there were two styles of beer: pale ale and dunkelweizen....

In instructions that came with my ingredients kits there were completely different steps!!

the main thing is that instructions suggest that mashing should be done in a kettle

(1.heat the water (3:1 ratio) to desired temperature (152 F), then add grains, put the lid on and wait until iodine test shows no starch (approx. 60 minutes)
2.increase the temperature (just light the fire back under the kettle) to 168 F
3. move everything to this:





and then sparge untill getting the boiling volume...



the other recipe - dunkelweizen is much more complicated, because I should mash inside a kettle four times, at four different temperatures, which means that I should heat up every time to a little bit higher temperature in a kettle.

the instructions then say: "...after mashing in a last (fourth) phase for 15 minutes, move all the contents of the kettle to a double bucket (showed on the pictures) and sparge until getting the boil volume.



now, I'm really confused because all of this mashing is done inside a kettle, and I wonder if this instruction is ok... I don't know what to think or do, and I have a plan to brew in the morning. can you please help me?

step 2 in your instructions is what's called a "mash-out."

You don't need to do that if you don't want to. You can just increase your sparge water temperature from 168F to ~180F to compensate. The goal is to get your grainbed up to ~168F. You can either do that by 1) increasing your mash temp to 168F and sparging with 168F water, or 2) sparging with 180F water.

for their step 1 instructions - if you want to mash at 152F, your water should be about 162F or so when you add the grain (you will lose a lot of heat when you add the grain).

Are you going to be mashing in the kettle or in a mash tun?

The typical mash temp is 152-3 degrees for one hour. Mixing hot water with your grain will lower the temp of the water you put in by about 15 degrees or more. I would recommend 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain. If you wanna know how many gallons to use just multiply the pounds of grain, lets say 12, by your quarts per pound of water, lets say 1.25, and divide by four. So 12*1.25 = 15 15/4= 3.75 gallons of water needed for the hour long mash. Use a temp calculator such as: http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml The first one is what you'll use. Leave the 1.25 in there, change the desired strike temp to 152 (as recommended by your recipe), and change the temp of the grain to whatever your room temperature of your home is. Leave the grain inside at that temp until you are ready to dough in. If you home was 74 degrees you'd need your water to be exactly 167 degrees at 1.25 quarts per pound to equalize to 152. Just plug in your numbers and go.

The second temp they are refering to is what's called a mash out. The point of this is to elevate the grain temp above a certain temperature to halt starch conversion and sort of freeze everything in it's tracks. You can skip this step too honestly. Many homebrewers don't mash out anymore.

After the 1 hour mash drain off as much of the liquid as you can. You'll lose a good amount of water to grain absorbtion. I'd drain off into a bucket with the measurements on the side so you know how much you have. The goal is to get about a gallon more than your desired final volume. If you are doing a 5 gallon batch aim to get 6 total gallons into the kettle to compensate for boiloff evaporation. If your first run after the mash yielded 3 gallons, you'd still need 3 more gallons. The second run yields about what you put in since the grains are already saturated. In this scenario I'd heat up 3 gallons of water to about 180 degrees (a typical sparge temp) and pour it in. Give it a good stir, rest a min or whatever, and drain.. You'll get almost exactly 3 gallons out which would bring you up to 6. Get all that into the kettle and start boiling.

Hope this helps.

oh yeah and those multi-step mashes such as a dunkelweizen is called a decoction mash.. You won't be doing that hehe. Just stick to a one hour mash and a sparge afterwards

The thing I like to stress is that you can mash in anything. If you hold some hot wet grain cupped between your hands, it will convert starch to sugar. Mashing in a heatable kettle allows you to apply heat when necessary. Using an insulated cooler lets you HOLD temps without heat. The latter is better for single temp rest profiles while the former is better for step mashes. Of course, you can also step mash via hot water infusions but now we're getting more complicated. I can see your lauter tun is a couple buckets which wouldn't hold heat without some external insulation. You can also mash in your pot, but wrap it with a blanket in between heat application.

Clever mash/lauter tun. That should work fine if it can hold water up to 180ish degrees. Most use a cooler of some sort with a false bottom, but there is no reason that your rig won't work just fine.

The calculations of the strike water are tough to do. I use Beersmith and it does the thinking for me.

Basically, you want to mash for 60-75mins between 149 - 154. Lower side giving more fermentables and the higher side giving more body.

Then I do 2 mash outs at 168-170.

Calculations like sparge and mash volumes and temperatures require a lot of thinking that I would rather not deal with. Pro-Mash or Beersmith have made life soooooo much easier.

That's a good kit, but you are going to need to make more holes in the sparge bucket. Welcome to AG, let your sparge be never stuck!

As far as the different temps for the mash, that depends from a syle of beer.

cvstrat said:

oh yeah and those multi-step mashes such as a dunkelweizen is called a decoction mash.. You won't be doing that hehe. Just stick to a one hour mash and a sparge afterwards

Click to expand...

why not? I mean, there must be a reason for that....?

I like that setup. Nice and simple with just a couple of buckets and a single kettle. Proves you don't need anything more, even though some of us go totally overboard.

400d said:

why not? I mean, there must be a reason for that....?

Click to expand...

BASICALLY
Grain will do different things at different temperatures. As you get more advanced you can do multiple temperature rests as described in the Dunkleweizen recipe. But for your beginner batches, just stick to a simple single temp mash. You will still get good beer.


They are describing Direct Fired Mashing like Bobby_M mentioned.

400d said:

why not? I mean, there must be a reason for that....?

Click to expand...

Tradition and that historically the brewers malts were not all that modified.. they didn't have as high an enzymatic power as modern malts.

Also allows you to build dextrins and mouthfeel without use of specialty malts.

Saccharomyces said:

I like that setup. Nice and simple with just a couple of buckets and a single kettle. Proves you don't need anything more, even though some of us go totally overboard.

Click to expand...

Like who? On HBT? CMON!

ok, now I recalled that in instructions there is no amount of priming sugar that I should add to beer before bottling...


what would it be? how can I calculate the amount of priming sugar? can I use normal white table sugar?

cvstrat said:

oh yeah and those multi-step mashes such as a dunkelweizen is called a decoction mash.. You won't be doing that hehe. Just stick to a one hour mash and a sparge afterwards

Click to expand...

Well, actually, that's a step mash. You can boil the grain (decoction) to achieve different temp steps, but that's a lot of work for what I think is a questionable benefit.

Here's a great read that will help you get a hold on some of the terms, techniques and processes.

http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html

Denny said:

Well, actually, that's a step mash. You can boil the grain (decoction) to achieve different temp steps, but that's a lot of work for what I think is a questionable benefit.

Click to expand...

+1 Step mashing is different than decoction mashing. You still see benefits/differences from different temp rests (step mashing) but the malts are basically modified to a point making Decoction mashing unnecessary unless you're going for a historical reproduction type thing