Overnight Mashing is a Thing?!
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mikescooling
Well-Known Member
You can do it, but if you ever smelled the MLT the next day, you run the risk of having it go bad. But yes I've done something like that with out probelms. I started a thread about time savers here (not that you need to save time):
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/what-saves-time-brew-day-418441/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/what-saves-time-brew-day-418441/
lebucheron
Well-Known Member
I do really long mashes sometimes (3-6 hours) but the wort is still safe from contamination etc. because it's still 140F or more. I like getting things going early morning and coming back to it after I've done a few things I need to do.
Would you consider changing your technique to reduce the time it takes to brew a batch. I can do a 5 gallon batch in 3 1/2 to 4 hours with more than 75% efficiency.
I don't know if the mash temperature is high enough to kill off the bacteria that is naturally present on the grains and would worry about getting a sour mash. I really would not want to wake up in the morning and drain off my first runnings to find out that I have what smells like a 4 day dead racoon sitting in 130 degree weather pouring into my BK. I just like to set aside adequate time to enjoy the brewday with no stress. Or if you really want to split up your brewday you can do the no-chill or after the mash bring it to a boil to sterilize, put a lid on the container and seal with plastic wrap, then do your boil the next day.
just my $0.02
just my $0.02
kombat
Well-Known Member
RM-MN, I don't want to open old wounds, but I recall calling you out on this in the past, and I believe you were counting the time from "doughing-in till pitching the yeast," and excluding the time spent weighing/milling the grains, heating the strike water, and then the eventual cleanup. Let's not mislead the OP.
That said, my brew days wrap up, start-to-finish, in 5 hours or less. Perhaps the OP could share a typical brewing day schedule and we can help identify some potential time-saving areas?
Yeah, I'd like to see a video of this 3.5 hour brew day.
mikescooling
Well-Known Member
Yea, I mill my grains in advance, and when the cooled wart is in the carboy, and also made the parti-gyle, I take a nap, then come back later and hit it with O2 and pitch the yeast. I've been known to leave most of the clean up for the next day. I bet if you add it all up, I'm 6-9hrs
MidTNJasonF
Well-Known Member
I can have an all grain batch done in just at or just under 5 hours. My best so far is probably 4.5 hrs. I started my Brew day Sunday at 4pm and by start I mean I began taking the cover off my stand and kettles, hooked up the propane tank, uncoiled the hose, and started filling the HLT with water. I was done by 9pm with 5 gallons in a carboy in the ferm chamber with yeast and I was sitting on the couch. All the gear was fully cleaned and put away except for the stuff that was hanging to dry like the hoses and my plate chiller.
Measure and mill your grain while the HLT is warming up
Measure and divide out your boil additions while the mash is going
Batch sparge.
If you must cut time somewhere cut your mash to 45 minutes.
Start the flame on the boil kettle while you are running your wort into it. Do not wait until have finished your sparge/runnings.
Clean your mashtun while the boil is going.
Sanitize your fermenter and transfer gear while the boil is going.
Put away pretty much every thing you do not need to chill and transfer while the boil is going.
Run your hot chiller output water into a vessel with PBW or Oxyclean
Buy a plate chiller
As soon as you have run the wort into the fermenter and capped it with an airlock/bung rinse and dump your boil kettle
Refill the boil kettle with the waiting hot PBW solution, a quick scrub of break/hop material, dump, rinse, invert to dry.
Pitch yeast and put the Fermenter in the ferm chamber.
Finish putting things away in their proper place and your day is done.
With all that said I do know a fellow that mashes overnight for every single batch. He has a fairly wide and short pot he uses as a mashtun. He doughs in and then sticks the whole thing in the oven set at 150 (warming setting for his oven). He goes to bed and leaves it be. He returns the next morning where he mashes out, sparges, and starts his boil. So he more or less mashes every beer at 150 degrees. He does not have any tight temperature control over the mash and I am not sure how well the oven maintains that set point. Most importantly he does not make good beer. I have had one beer from him that was passable/drinkable. Most of his beers have significant flaws.
Can you do it? Sure. Should you do it? Probably not, there are better ways to improve your brew day and cut down on your time investment. I have mashed for 2, 3, and even 4 days doing sour mash Berliner beers. In most cases things turned out ok but in one case putrid baby vomit is about the only way I could describe it.
Measure and mill your grain while the HLT is warming up
Measure and divide out your boil additions while the mash is going
Batch sparge.
If you must cut time somewhere cut your mash to 45 minutes.
Start the flame on the boil kettle while you are running your wort into it. Do not wait until have finished your sparge/runnings.
Clean your mashtun while the boil is going.
Sanitize your fermenter and transfer gear while the boil is going.
Put away pretty much every thing you do not need to chill and transfer while the boil is going.
Run your hot chiller output water into a vessel with PBW or Oxyclean
Buy a plate chiller
As soon as you have run the wort into the fermenter and capped it with an airlock/bung rinse and dump your boil kettle
Refill the boil kettle with the waiting hot PBW solution, a quick scrub of break/hop material, dump, rinse, invert to dry.
Pitch yeast and put the Fermenter in the ferm chamber.
Finish putting things away in their proper place and your day is done.
With all that said I do know a fellow that mashes overnight for every single batch. He has a fairly wide and short pot he uses as a mashtun. He doughs in and then sticks the whole thing in the oven set at 150 (warming setting for his oven). He goes to bed and leaves it be. He returns the next morning where he mashes out, sparges, and starts his boil. So he more or less mashes every beer at 150 degrees. He does not have any tight temperature control over the mash and I am not sure how well the oven maintains that set point. Most importantly he does not make good beer. I have had one beer from him that was passable/drinkable. Most of his beers have significant flaws.
Can you do it? Sure. Should you do it? Probably not, there are better ways to improve your brew day and cut down on your time investment. I have mashed for 2, 3, and even 4 days doing sour mash Berliner beers. In most cases things turned out ok but in one case putrid baby vomit is about the only way I could describe it.
Yes you did call me out on this and no, it isn't just the dough in to pitching. I can count from the time I start bring equipment from my basement until it is cleaned and put away. I'm doing it BIAB and I an quite efficient on my brew day. I'll get the pot full of water and begin heating while I bring the rest of the equipment and weight the grains. Since I am heating on the kitchen stove (electric) it takes a while to heat up so I mill the grains with my Corona style mill. Since they are milled fine, I only need a 30 minute mash, probably less because using the iodine test, my starch is converted in less than 10 minutes due to the fineness of the grains. Pull the bag of grains out of the pot and turn the burner on high again to bring it to boil and then squeeze the rest of the wort out of the grains and add it back to the pot. While it is heating to boil, make sure the fermenter bucket is clean and has sanitizer in it. Put the grain mill away, dump the spent grains and rinse the bag they were in and hang to dry. Add hops as soon as the hot break falls, boil for an hour. Put the pot into a big tub of cold water with ice (snow if in season) and let it chill while I finish any more cleanup, then dump it into the fermenter and pitch the yeast. Clean up the pot and put it away.
Now I suppose you want to tell me I can't bottle a 5 gallon batch in less than 2 hours too.
How much ice are you using, and how long does it take to chill? What temperature are you pitching at?
As much ice as it takes to keep at least a little floating in the big container. If I didn't have plentiful snow available most of the time I brew, I would start with water only and let the wort cool quite a bit with that, dump it out and add fresh cold water before adding ice. I like to pitch at less than 65 F. Chilling usually takes 15 to 25 minutes. You want the level of water in the tub to be as close to the level of the wort in the kettle for efficient heat transfer. When I don't have ice, I run the hose in one end of the tub and let the excess spill out the other, hopefully taking the hottest water first.
midfielder5
Well-Known Member
Back to the question: Yes it can be done, with the right conditions, and there are a few threads on here about it.
The wort won't get sour unless it drops below 130* for some period of time.
I have mashed in at night, went to bed, woke up and sparged. No issue, but it was sitting less than 8 hours. My MLT is a 10 gallon pot that I left on the stove top, covered in a towel. It dropped about 5 or 10 degrees (I don't really recall but it was nowhere near 130) overnight. My house here in CA is 62-68 depending on the season.
Good luck.
The wort won't get sour unless it drops below 130* for some period of time.
I have mashed in at night, went to bed, woke up and sparged. No issue, but it was sitting less than 8 hours. My MLT is a 10 gallon pot that I left on the stove top, covered in a towel. It dropped about 5 or 10 degrees (I don't really recall but it was nowhere near 130) overnight. My house here in CA is 62-68 depending on the season.
Good luck.
I'd like to see video of this. Many people, even with cool tap water, take 15 minutes to chill with a wort chiller. If you're not stirring (It seems like you couldn't be if you're doing other stuff.) I'm skeptical about this claim.
Wow... what a plethora of information. I'm glad I asked about that before I even dreamed of doing anything. So no overnight mashes for me! AND all my brew day times include cleaning, but exclude milling and measuring grains which is done at the LHBS.
I'd type my brew day, but it'd get to extensive. I'll mention things that eat up the most time:
-measuring out water. Believe it or not it takes a while to get 7 gallons out of my kitchen sink. (I'm not sure I trust water through a garden hose outside, though the source should be the same as the kitchen)
-heating water/wort. I have a blichmann and a bayou classic 10 gal pot that I don't want to destroy so I'm typically conservative on the heat.
-monkeying around without a HLT. I'm building one from a 1/4 barrel keg, but for now I heat my water in my BK and run my first runnings into a smaller SS pot (2.5 gal) then use then while waiting for the sparge water to sit for 30 mins I transfer the wort via siphon to the BK.
-chilling. in 80-90 degree heat it can take 50-60 mins to bring the temp down to the around 68 F using a 25 ft standard immersion chiller. I have a chamber for fermentation that works with cold water submersion. Maybe I can put it in the carboy at a reasonable temp, then put it in the chamber and just wait while to pitch?
Wow guys. I love how so many of us are passionate about process refining.
thanks for any and all advise.
I'd type my brew day, but it'd get to extensive. I'll mention things that eat up the most time:
-measuring out water. Believe it or not it takes a while to get 7 gallons out of my kitchen sink. (I'm not sure I trust water through a garden hose outside, though the source should be the same as the kitchen)
-heating water/wort. I have a blichmann and a bayou classic 10 gal pot that I don't want to destroy so I'm typically conservative on the heat.
-monkeying around without a HLT. I'm building one from a 1/4 barrel keg, but for now I heat my water in my BK and run my first runnings into a smaller SS pot (2.5 gal) then use then while waiting for the sparge water to sit for 30 mins I transfer the wort via siphon to the BK.
-chilling. in 80-90 degree heat it can take 50-60 mins to bring the temp down to the around 68 F using a 25 ft standard immersion chiller. I have a chamber for fermentation that works with cold water submersion. Maybe I can put it in the carboy at a reasonable temp, then put it in the chamber and just wait while to pitch?
Wow guys. I love how so many of us are passionate about process refining.
thanks for any and all advise.
JonGrafto
Well-Known Member
Stirring your wort while you have an immersion chiller will drastically reduce your chill time.
Although I still worry about leaving the brew kettle open and something getting in it.. That is why I switched to a plate chiller.
Although I still worry about leaving the brew kettle open and something getting in it.. That is why I switched to a plate chiller.
stpug
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My typical brewday from bringing up equipment from the basement until everything is cleaned and drying is 5-6 hours for a single infusion batch sparge (5 hours is pretty typical). The variance in time is largely dependent on mash time (45, 60, 75, 90 minutes), boil time (60, 75, 90 minutes), and hop steep (0, 15, 30, 45 minutes).
I feel like you can bring your 7-8 hour brewday to around 5 hours for most batches, and that would be a huge difference in your brewday if you just did that (2-3 hours less).
I feel like you can bring your 7-8 hour brewday to around 5 hours for most batches, and that would be a huge difference in your brewday if you just did that (2-3 hours less).
Crank the heat man!!! at least until you get it boiling. It's not destroying it, it's using it.
I have moved to a single pump and three keg pots, but i had a very similar process as you prior to that. Not much you can do about shuffling the wort and sparge water, but seriously crank the heat on you burner. Depending on how conservative you have been this could save you a fair amount of time.
Best of luck to you
So long as the pot is full of wort you will not damage it with direct flame. There are people who boil water in animal hide bags over camp fires. You are good so long as there is a liquid inside that can absorb the heat.
kombat
Well-Known Member
I apologize for the tangent, but let's just run some numbers, out of curiousity.
OK, let's say it takes you 5 minutes to bring your gear upstairs and fill your pot with your strike water. In my setup, it takes me about 15 minutes to get 4 gallons of strike water to dough-in temperature, but I'm using a propane burner, and I start with hot water from the tap that's already 120° F. If you're starting with cold water and using an electric stove, can we call it 30 minutes to get 4 gallons up to 160°? I'll concede that you're doing other tasks while this is happening, so let's assume your grains get milled and everything else is set up during the 30 minutes you're waiting to reach temperature.
Doughing-in is not instantaneuous - figure another 10 minutes to securely attach the grain bag, then dump in the grains, stir to mix well, wait for the temperature to settle at the rest temperature, then seal up the tun/pot.
30 minutes is a little brief (10 is absurdly so), but I'll go with it, for the sake of argument. By the end of your mash, you're already 1:15 into it.
Again, it takes time to raise the temperature from 150-ish up to boiling. With my propane setup, that amounts to about half an hour (rising 2 degrees per minute), but I'll allow that your stove somehow achieves comparable performance, and 30 minutes after lifting the grain bag, you're boiling. That's 1:45.
My break falls in 5-10 minutes, so with the hour-long boil, you've now spent 2:55.
As someone else noted, if you're doing other stuff, then you're not swirling the wort to speed up chilling, and thus there's no way you're getting that chilled down in 15 minutes. Heck, I use a plate chiller, running my hose water through 50' of copper coil immersed in ice water, and it still takes me 20 minutes to get 5 gallons down to 65° F. Can I call this 30 minutes? Now we're up to 3:25.
5 minutes, at most. That's 3:30.
Hold on there, tiger. There are a lot of tasks you're skimming over here. It takes me a good 15 minutes to clean my kettle, but granted, that includes removing, dismantling, cleaning, reassembling, and reinstalling a Hop Stopper. But even the kettle itself gets a thorough scrubbing with PBW, followed by a couple rinse cycles. What about your chiller? Don't you at least hose it off? Did you not take a gravity sample? Do you clean your hydrometer and test jar afterwards? Taste the sample? Do you take any notes about the gravity, colour, etc.? Did you aerate the wort somehow? Carry it to the basement and put it in a swamp cooler? Cover it with a t-shirt and confirm the temperature? Clean the funnel used to pour in the yeast? Pack up the chiller, autosiphon, hydrometer, BrewHauler, whatever else? All of the things I just listed take me at least a half an hour in total.
There's your 4 hours. And if you'd done a "proper" (tongue-in-cheek) 60 minute mash, it'd be 4.5 hours, which, not coincidentally, is how long it takes me.
I apologize for the tangent, but let's just run some numbers, out of curiousity.
OK, let's say it takes you 5 minutes to bring your gear upstairs and fill your pot with your strike water. In my setup, it takes me about 15 minutes to get 4 gallons of strike water to dough-in temperature, but I'm using a propane burner, and I start with hot water from the tap that's already 120° F. If you're starting with cold water and using an electric stove, can we call it 30 minutes to get 4 gallons up to 160°? I'll concede that you're doing other tasks while this is happening, so let's assume your grains get milled and everything else is set up during the 30 minutes you're waiting to reach temperature.
Doughing-in is not instantaneuous - figure another 10 minutes to securely attach the grain bag, then dump in the grains, stir to mix well, wait for the temperature to settle at the rest temperature, then seal up the tun/pot.
30 minutes is a little brief (10 is absurdly so), but I'll go with it, for the sake of argument. By the end of your mash, you're already 1:15 into it.
Again, it takes time to raise the temperature from 150-ish up to boiling. With my propane setup, that amounts to about half an hour (rising 2 degrees per minute), but I'll allow that your stove somehow achieves comparable performance, and 30 minutes after lifting the grain bag, you're boiling. That's 1:45.
My break falls in 5-10 minutes, so with the hour-long boil, you've now spent 2:55.
As someone else noted, if you're doing other stuff, then you're not swirling the wort to speed up chilling, and thus there's no way you're getting that chilled down in 15 minutes. Heck, I use a plate chiller, running my hose water through 50' of copper coil immersed in ice water, and it still takes me 20 minutes to get 5 gallons down to 65° F. Can I call this 30 minutes? Now we're up to 3:25.
5 minutes, at most. That's 3:30.
Hold on there, tiger. There are a lot of tasks you're skimming over here. It takes me a good 15 minutes to clean my kettle, but granted, that includes removing, dismantling, cleaning, reassembling, and reinstalling a Hop Stopper. But even the kettle itself gets a thorough scrubbing with PBW, followed by a couple rinse cycles. What about your chiller? Don't you at least hose it off? Did you not take a gravity sample? Do you clean your hydrometer and test jar afterwards? Taste the sample? Do you take any notes about the gravity, colour, etc.? Did you aerate the wort somehow? Carry it to the basement and put it in a swamp cooler? Cover it with a t-shirt and confirm the temperature? Clean the funnel used to pour in the yeast? Pack up the chiller, autosiphon, hydrometer, BrewHauler, whatever else? All of the things I just listed take me at least a half an hour in total.
There's your 4 hours. And if you'd done a "proper" (tongue-in-cheek) 60 minute mash, it'd be 4.5 hours, which, not coincidentally, is how long it takes me.
It sounds like I need a new stove. Most electric stoves that I've encountered have a hard time boiling 6+ gallons. His can apparently work as quickly as an outdoor propane burner.
As was said before, crank the heat up. The pot was made to boil liquid on a propane burner. There's no way you can get the burner hot enough to do any damage to the pot as long as your aren't boiling it dry.
This is a batch sparge right? There's no need to let the water sit for 30 minutes. All you're doing when you sparge is rinsing more sugar out of the grain. So you just want to mix the grain with the water to make sure the water touches everything then let the grain settle back down so you can drain it. I wait 5-10 minutes max, vorlaf, then drain. And I just pour the wort from a bucket I collect it in to the BK. I don't put much stock in HSA.
stpug
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I brew on a solid surface stove. I start boils with either 6.75 or 7.25 gallons depending on boil time (60 vs 90 minutes). I bring my BK up to a boil from ~150F in about 30 minutes. Once I reach a boil I have to turn my dial down from 10 to about 8.5 to maintain a good rolling boil.
Conclusion: I guess you DO need a new stove
Regardless, RM-MN can accomplish their brewday quicker than most folks. What's the big deal? There are lots of variables at play here. Mashes can be under 15 minutes at high temps. Boils need not conform to the 60 minute minimum requirement. Not everyone needs to be as meticulous (i.e. anal) about cleaning their equipment as I am. When reading a post like this I generally use the consensus as a good baseline rather than what just one person can do (they're considered a statistical outlier).
I brew on a solid surface stove. I start boils with either 6.75 or 7.25 gallons depending on boil time (60 vs 90 minutes). I bring my BK up to a boil from ~150F in about 30 minutes. Once I reach a boil I have to turn my dial down from 10 to about 8.5 to maintain a good rolling boil.
Conclusion: I guess you DO need a new stove
Regardless, RM-MN can accomplish their brewday quicker than most folks. What's the big deal? There are lots of variables at play here. Mashes can be under 15 minutes at high temps. Boils need not conform to the 60 minute minimum requirement. Not everyone needs to be as meticulous (i.e. anal) about cleaning their equipment as I am. When reading a post like this I generally use the consensus as a good baseline rather than what just one person can do (they're considered a statistical outlier).
Ultimately it doesn't matter. But, I'm naturally a skeptical person and I just have my doubts, especially with the cooling so quickly with just an ice bath and no stirring (that he mentioned at least).
I do not see how this works. Since mash temps varying from 150deg F to 155 deg F can be the difference between a dry final product and a malty final product, hotter mash temps will denature the enzymes. That is one small part of what the boil does. Enzymes work in a specific range of temperatures so how is it that a higher temperature mash will convert things faster or am I reading what you wrote wrong?
If, on the other hand you are saying that standard 150-5 mash temps will convert fully in 15 minutes, you must be using a fair bit of 6-row/high diastatic grains, or nothing but base grains ground to flour. Enzumes can only work so fast.
Also, 60 min boils are for DMS reduction as well as the bittering hop additions. Different boil times on hops equal different hop utilization.
Enzymes work faster at higher temps. A 158 mash will be done before a 148 mash, for example.
I am not trying to argue, but I believe your logic may be flawed there.
As is detailed here on the beersmith website.
If you mash at 158 you are going to be converting mainly using the Alpha amalayse enzyme which should end up with a far less fermentable wort. Mashing closer to the lower 150's would yield a more fermentable wort where you have more shorter chain sugars which ferment well.
see
So I repeat, enzymes can only work so fast.
Yes, it'll be less fermentable, but the mash will be finished faster (all of the starch will be converted to (longer chain in this case) sugars).
His logic isn't flawed, it's basic chemistry. Increased heat causes the rate of chemical reactions to increase. He didn't say anything about the fermentability of the wort. 158 is a common mash temp for full bodied beers and 148 is a common mash temp for light bodied beers. Usually it's recommended to mash for 45 minutes at 158 and 75-90 minutes at 148 for this reason.
Okay, you may be correct that the alpha amylase may break down the starches quicker as they have less to do(though i cannot confirm/disconfirm that), but in the process you have denatured many of the beta amylase enzymes and in no way will end up with the same beer the recipe calls for. I would stick with the standard recipe reccomendations for mash temps or between the two so that I end up with a balanced beer and less of a malt bomb. Maltiness is good for some styles, (Oktoberfests, Brown ales, etc), but such a high mash temp would be counterintuative in a dry stout or a pale lager or any other style which calls for dryness or a low FG.
Also, you don't have to have a 60 minute bittering addition. That's the whole idea behind hop bursting. And DMS is less of a concern with modern highly modified malts. I've seen a lot of Berliner Weisse recipes that are no boil.
Once again. It all depends on the recipe/ingredients/beer you are brewing. If you use a lot of pilsner malts you will want a longer boil.
The half-life for DMS is 40 minutes, so half of the DMS will be boiled off in a 40 minute vigorous boil. So if we do the math, a 60 minute boil gets rid of 64.7% of the DMS and a 90 minute boil rids us of 79% of the DMS. That is why most experienced brewers recommend a 90 minute or longer vigorous boil.
The half-life for DMS is 40 minutes, so half of the DMS will be boiled off in a 40 minute vigorous boil. So if we do the math, a 60 minute boil gets rid of 64.7% of the DMS and a 90 minute boil rids us of 79% of the DMS. That is why most experienced brewers recommend a 90 minute or longer vigorous boil.
Right, you wouldn't change the mash temp of a recipe just to save time. But nobody was talking about a specific recipe. He just said "mashes can be under 15 minutes at high temps".
And it's not that the alpha amylase works faster than the beta amylase at high temps, it's that all enzymes and all chemical reactions in nature occur faster with higher heat. Increasing the heat increases the energy in the system which makes molecules move around faster which increases the rate of reaction.
I searched for info on how fast the enzymes do work and couldn't find much so I decided to test on my own. I bought a bottle of iodine and took the first sample when I doughed in. Of course it showed the blue/purple color that indicates starch. I intended to sample every 5 minutes until I got no color change with the iodine which would indicate full conversion. My second sample didn't get taken until 7 minutes from dough-in and there was no color change in the iodine at all. Full conversion of starch to sugar in less than 7 minutes at a mash temp of ~153.
stpug
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I'll start by saying I'm no chemist nor am I a biology major, just a plain old homebrewer. Mash temperatures are much larger than 150-155 BTW; I've done 147F mashes and 158F mashes, and the range is still greater (~140-164F).
However, the guys at Stone brewing have been around the block a couple times and even published a book with recipes for us homebrewers to peruse. Reading their recipe for Stone's Levitation Ale you'll read:
On a separate recipe later on the mash time recommended is 20 minutes.
Now, if you're asking if I do these short conversion then the answer is 'No'; never have but I would test it out if I had some iodine for conversion checking. Instead I rely on time, temperature, and generalized standards homebrewers have settled upon. The shortest mash I've done is 45 minutes.
I also understand what you're saying about DMS and boil time, and again I think that we're dealing with a generalized standard that homebrewers have settled upon. Unfortunately, this one is a lot harder to test for so we fall back on the standards to guide our process. It's when these standards get pushed that we find new things out about brewing (or we end up with bad tasting batches
).Hop utilization as it relates to IBUs can easily be overcome for shorter boils - just use more for less time.
With an immersion chiller you have water at tap temperature that is in contact with the wort. This is near the outside of the pot so you set up a thermal exchange where the wort is cooled and settles to the bottom of the kettle while the hot wort comes to the top and moves outward. The limit to speed is the temperature differential between the tap water and the wort and from what I've read, at the start the water coming out of the chiller is near boiling (good thermal transfer, but with limits). With my pot setting in a big tub of cold water, I have a large area for thermal transfer (the entire outside of the pot) and if possible I keep adding snow to keep the temperature of the water bath as low as possible. I don't need to stir because the wort naturally makes a convection current for me. If you don't have snow, you can use ice but since snow is a 4 month continuous thing here, why not use it. I'd like to have it all melted by the time January is half over.
Right, but I'm saying highly modified malts don't contain as much SMM (the precursor of DMS) to begin with. 64.7% of 0 is still 0. And 79% of 0 is also 0. I'm exagerating because I know they do contain some SMM but it's at a low enough level that the difference between 64.7% and 79% of it is negligible. Pilsner malts are not as well modified and contain more SMM so I would boil that for 90 minutes. But again, I don't think he was making a blanket statement about brewing technique that you should follow regardless of recipes and ingredients.
Not necessarily. Temperature will speed up the enzymes activity to a point. But if you go above the working temperature of an enzyme it will denature (break/modify the enzyme so that it doesnt work anymore) it. Yes it will work for a little while above its working temperature range but will denautre and not work anymore. If you make it further above the range it will denature faster. Denaturing the enzymes is how we control the fermentability of the wort.
Ok you do have a semantic point that you could possibly complete a conversion in 15 minutes (once again I have not tested this so I do not know for certain), but it will not be a mash according to the recipe. Maybe I am just a stickler for having the intended beer rather than just be in a rush. If I wanted a mash done in 15 minutes I would just use extracts to better effect. It seemed to me by the message that the poster was saying that we homebrewers are too 'stick by the traditional way of doing things" such as can be said about using a secondary when it can be done as easily with a 15 minute mash and a 60 minute boil.
First, alpha amylase has an optimum temp right around 158. Second, no one was talking about the intended beer. We were only talking about speed.
