How the mashing process works

Hey everyone. Someone suggested that I try to make an oatmeal stout beer, Lil' Sparky's receipt. it requires mashing though and I've never done that before. Can anyone give me some pointers or give advice? Thanks!


peace
-gw

It requires some equipment upgrades and is a more detailed process than extract w/ steeping grains. Read this section of how to brew. It'll probably be easier(and cheaper) to convert the recipe to extract w/ grains or even a partial mash

You don't have to mash to make an oatmeal stout. You can just steep your oats in 150-160° water for 20 minutes, then use extract.

I would recommend you do a partial mash. It will introduce you to mashing in a small scale without the need for alot more equipment. You will get more flavour, fermentables and body if you mash the oats rather then steeping them. Check out the wiki for how to do it.

GT

gerrg said:

Hey everyone. Someone suggested that I try to make an oatmeal stout beer, Lil' Sparky's receipt. it requires mashing though and I've never done that before. Can anyone give me some pointers or give advice? Thanks!


peace
-gw

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Just to give you a brief idea here, when you steep grains you extract some color and flavor from the grains you've got. It makes a nice grain tea that gives an extract based beer a fresher taste and color, but it adds little to no fermentables to your wort.

The process of mashing actually takes controlled temperatures for a longer amount of time than steeping. More importantly, mashing to get fermentable sugars out of the grains will take a specific type of enzyme to do the work. John Palmer's "How to Brew" says this in the glossary:
"Amylase - An enzyme group that converts starches to sugars, consisting primarily of alpha and beta amylase. Also referred to as the diastatic enzymes."
You need a specific ratio of base grains, such as 2 row malt, or Marris Otter or Golden Promise, etc. to produce these Amylase that will in turn mash the other grains too.

It sounds complicated, but there's plenty of calculators available to figure out how much of any base grains, and at what temps you'll need to mash.

ma2brew said:

Just to give you a brief idea here, when you steep grains you extract some color and flavor from the grains you've got. It makes a nice grain tea that gives an extract based beer a fresher taste and color, but it adds little to no fermentables to your wort.

Click to expand...

With oats you'd be adding a lot of unconverted starch to the wort if you just steeped it. Ideally oats, corn, rice, and unmalted barley or wheat should all be mashed with a base malt.

flowerysong said:

With oats you'd be adding a lot of unconverted starch to the wort if you just steeped it. Ideally oats, corn, rice, and unmalted barley or wheat should all be mashed with a base malt.

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Not to sound like a jerk here, but did you read my whole post?

ETA:
I'm re-reading my reply here and just want to make sure I don't sound like an a$$. The OP doesn't even actually list the grains he intends to steep. He may be steeping more than just oats, but you are correct that simply steeping the oats would just add starch. I may not have been clear enough in stating the reason I put a definition of amylase up, but it would in fact take the act of mashing the base malts I spoke of along with the oats to make the starches from the oats fermentable. Sorry if I sounded like I am a pro, or if I spoke/typed condescendingly. I'm still a noob myself, but I am reading all I can.

Matt