Cereal mash goop

So let's say I precook the grains before adding them to the mash. Like in the case of oats. Maybe even a cereal mash. It doesn't matter.

Let's say a pound of oats.

If I'm cooking this stuff, it's going to absorb quite a bit of water. If I have a lot of unmalted adjuncts, it will absorb a lot of water. Now the calculations in most software will not take this into account. So now I will have extra water in the mash and sparge that isn't necessary. How do you take this into account? Do you even need to?

And, do you throw the goopy cooking liquid in the mash? It's going to contain a lot of liberated startches. So do you expect a lower extract potential as a result? If I boil a pound of oats, some percentage will dissolve into the cooking liquid leaving less in the actual grain itself. But if I add the goopy liquid to my mash, that too will throw off the water calculations. But in this case, it's a little easier since I can measure exactly what I'm adding.

I have not found this discussed. Everything just says, "Cook or cereal mash and add to mash." No mention of the cooking liquid.

How does this work?

Bump

I did a cream ale last year where I did something similar to what you are talking about here. The recipe I was using called for flaked maize. Instead, I used grits. Not the instant kind so, I had to precook them. I accounted for the water it took me to cook the grits and subtracted that from the total volume of my mash water.

I don't remember the exact amount of water I used for that recipe but, for examples sake, if your initial mash volume needs to be five gallons and you know that it's going to take one gallon to cook your oats, then only use four gallons of water. The additional gallon will come from your prepared oats.

In my case, I just dumped the entire pot of grits into my mash. I do remember having to add extra hot water to that mash to get it up to my initial mash temp. I don't remember how much though. I batch sparge as well so, I don't think that having some extra water really does much to throw things off.

I'm confused by your question.
When the mash is done, toss the whole mess into the lautering tun to separate out the spent grain. Sparge until the running looks like water or until you run out of brew pot volume. Don't forget the "foundation water".

highgravitybacon said:

Now the calculations in most software will not take this into account. So now I will have extra water in the mash and sparge that isn't necessary. How do you take this into account?

Click to expand...

Boil longer.