Efficiency and flavor: more = less?

The thread about the Milds got me thinking a little more about this. It seems to me that a lot of people are focused on achieving greater and greater mash efficiencies, and that a low efficiency is bad. Certainly the more efficient the mash, the more formentable sugars you will get, the OG will be higher and you'll likely get more alcohol. But what about the flavor? Would you get more flavors from the malt in the final product if you used more base malt, but had less starch conversion (lower efficiency). I don't have a firm opinion either way. I'm seeking out any evidence one way or the other, either anecdotal or otherwise. Did that batch you made with low efficiency taste really good?

Certainly if one adds more specialty malts you get more flavor, and many of the specialty malts don't add a lot of fermentables to the wort. So then would not the same be true of flavor from a base malt? But what if you don't want a higher OG beer (like in a Mild)? It seems to me then that making your mash less efficient (shorter time, temp schedule, pH off, etc) would give you all of the flavor with less fermentables. Maybe a 20 min. mash at 148 F, then 160 F for 20 min. Or 20 min. @ 148 F then an extra long mashout to limit alpha amylase activity if a lower FG is desired, while still allowing time for maximal flavor release.

I guess the question is how fast are the flavor compunds released from the malt? Are they soluble and released right away or are they bound up and released by enzymatic action as the mash proceeds? In the case of the clove flavors in Wheat beers, I did do some reading and the precursors for this are mostly relased by enzyme action during the mash. Of course this flavor would not be appropriate in a Mild or a Pilsner. I haven't yet found any references for other flavor compounds.

Most on the scientific literature I see is geared towards maximizing production and minimizing oxidation in big breweries so it is a little hard to find information on poorer utilization. At the homebrew scale, adding an extra pound of base malt to each batch doesn't add much to the cost. If I'd get more flavor (without more alcohol) I'd do it.

I have a fuzzy recollection of reading in several books that there is some basis to this. The default efficiency in ProMash in 75%. I can't recall right now what efficiency rate is used in Jamil Z.s book, but I do know it is no more than 75%, and might be 70%. I'll check that tonight at home.

This is a good question. I often want more malt flavor in my beers. I wonder if I used a few more pounds of malt if I'd get the increased maltiness I want, but at 90% average efficiency I'd get too much alcohol as well.

I've thought about opening the gap on my Barley Crusher in an effort to bring down efficiency and see what effect this would have on my beers. I haven't done that yet because I'm taking a recipe based approach to getting more malt flavor, like lowering IBUs, going with higher mash temp, and using more Munich and Vienna malt. If I can't get what I want this way, then maybe I'll try messing with my efficiency.

I have to say that I made a light beer (on accident) and thought the flavor was great. Honestly, in my post to strive to make my two week beer I have to admit that I have yet to make a beer over 4.5% due to crappy efficiency.

What is the reason we don't do a longer mash at a decreasing temperature? Say 90 minutes starting at 158*F and every half hour give it a healthy stir so that by the end you are sitting around 140*F. In cooking you get interesting flavors, but I know that a lot of people brewing say that strange flavors start coming out. I am new so...

Instead of getting a coarser grind, why not use more unfermentables? I am looking not for more malty, but more mouthfeel. The two can coincide and can also come from other adjuncts apparently.

Is there too much efficiency?


PS...I am looking for beer to match my economy. So the less malt I use while acheiving full flavor is my bang for the buck job well done.

What about adding malts that will give you more unfermentables and dextrins:

carapils, carahell, caramel malt, unmalted barley or oatmeal

Also, munich gives a nice malty flavor. I'm no expert, but just my experience thusfar and some advice from LHBS guys

You may also want to check out this:
How to Brew - By John Palmer - Increasing the Body

Cheers!

Excellent topic pjj2ba. I have wondered about similar things like this too, but couldn't have articulated the issues as well as you have.

FWIW, I haven't noticed any difference between 70% efficiency and high 80's (I have been experimenting with my crush to find out). However, some really credible brewers (like Fix, Papazian, Zainasheff) have all made arguments that 75% is their target efficiency. I trust their experience and judgement, although we see homebrewing dogma thrown out all the time as we learn more (e.g., 1 week primary rule, HSA paranoia, batch sparging is less efficient, etc.).

I do agree, however, that obsessing about efficiency is becoming all too commonplace with homebrewers. High efficiency will not help you to make better beer -- in fact, it might distract you from brewing CONSISTENT efficiency. And IMO, if you can't brew consistently, you won't ever brew the best beer you are capable of. I think more people would benefit from striving to brew at CONSISTENT efficiency, and then worry about how high they get secondarily.

Matt Up North said:

What is the reason we don't do a longer mash at a decreasing temperature? Say 90 minutes starting at 158*F and every half hour give it a healthy stir so that by the end you are sitting around 140*F.

PS...I am looking for beer to match my economy. So the less malt I use while acheiving full flavor is my bang for the buck job well done.

Click to expand...

At 158 F you have gone above where beta-amylase is inactivated so you'll get lots of large dextrines from alpha-amylase, but not much maltose resulting in a low fermentable wort that will finish with a high gravity (appropriate for some styles). As the mash cools, the beta-amylase activity won't recover. Sort of a point of no return

Is there too much efficiency?

Click to expand...

That is the gist of my post

What about adding malts that will give you more unfermentables and dextrins:carapils, carahell, caramel malt, unmalted barley or oatmeal

Also, munich gives a nice malty flavor. I'm no expert, but just my experience thusfar and some advice from LHBS guys

Click to expand...

Carapils and carahell are supposed to be fairly flavor neutral, and used to add some body. I'm looking specifically for flavor, not body/mouthfeel. I love Munich, but it isn't a grain I want to put into every beer that I want more flavor in.

I've thought about opening the gap on my Barley Crusher in an effort to bring down efficiency and see what effect this would have on my beers. I haven't done that yet because I'm taking a recipe based approach to getting more malt flavor, like lowering IBUs, going with higher mash temp, and using more Munich and Vienna malt. If I can't get what I want this way, then maybe I'll try messing with my efficiency.

Click to expand...

I wonder if by opening the gap, you would also lower the efficiency of extracting the flavor components. It might though depend on where in the grain the flavor compounds reside. The endosperm of the grain is pretty much just starch and this is surronded by a layer just a couple cells thick (aleurone layer for people who like to know this kind of thing) that is reponisble for making all of the enzymes used for germination (and mashing). I'm suspicious that this is where much of the flavor components are from. It certainly is where a lot of nutrients are. This is the layer that is removed in making polished rice. Unpolished rice has a lot more flavor (and also goes stale faster). So maybe if the crush is enough to remove much of the husk but leave the endosperm in larger chunks, this might just work.

I've got a 3 roller mill and I've been messing around with conditioning my grain prior to milling. I found that this really helps me to get the husk off intact, but I was getting much larger chunks of endosperm so for the last two batches I double milled. Maybe I'll go back to a single pass to compare.

I do not know all the specifics, but this is the way that I think it works. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. I believe that the efficiency of your mash will both impart more flavor and sugars. I do not believe that extra malt will necessarily give you more malt flavor. If it takes you 10 pounds of malt to get a 1.045 gravity or it talks 12 pounds to get a 1.045 gravity you have extracted the same amount of sugars and flavor. I believe that the mash temp is more related to the flavor (malty) and mouthfeel. An increase in mash temp will increase your unfermentables and therefore give you a maltier beer.

As far as the longer mashes and letting the temp slowly fall you could certainly do this, but I think you would end up with a super fermentable wort and the beer would lack mouthfeel.

So far the only thing I have seen on this topic is discussion around HERMS systems, running a single no-sparge runoff. Efficiency is maybe 60-65% in such a setup ?? since you can get a good solid mashout and plenty of recirculation to extract the sugars, but there is no rinse water. The claim is that the zero sparge produces a clearer wort with fewer grainy flavors extracted from the husk.

When I runoff a smaller beer I watch the pH of my last runnings to make sure I'm below 6 to avoid extracting off flavors. If my efficiency was lower I will admit my pH of my last runnings would not be a concern. That is the only factor I can think of to look at.

I agree that consistency is more important to aim for than absolute efficiency. I'll take my time sparging a big beer to keep the grainbill at a reasonable size, but generally do a simple double batch sparge for smaller beers and aim for consistent low 80's efficiency I can count on from my equipment and procedures.. makes for a true RDWHAHB brew day.

Hmm, interesting topic. It could easily be tested by opening the crush gap and adding the extra malt. On a well defined system you should be able to prove it one way or the other, but what I'd do is go way over the amount, not just a lb. and go for really crappy efficiency. Then you'd know if you didn't get the 'more' flavor you can start looking into the time extraction theory. I am willing to bet higher temperature kilned malts release more readily than low temperature kilned. I don't have any proof other than intuition

zoebisch01 said:

Hmm, interesting topic. It could easily be tested by opening the crush gap and adding the extra malt. On a well defined system you should be able to prove it one way or the other, but what I'd do is go way over the amount, not just a lb. and go for really crappy efficiency. Then you'd know if you didn't get the 'more' flavor you can start looking into the time extraction theory. I am willing to bet higher temperature kilned malts release more readily than low temperature kilned. I don't have any proof other than intuition

Click to expand...

I suspect you are correct. In the higher kilned and roasted malts, a lot of the flavour comes from the husk and outer parts of the grain. If your extract efficiency is lower, and you compensate by adding more grain, it stands to reason that the brew with more grain will have more flavour, all else being equal.

I sense an experiment coming. Anybody for a 60-70-80-90 stout?

Though this isn't really proof before I got my own barley crusher I had my LHBS crush my grains and my first All grain's effiency was way off. So the next time I ordered 20% more grain achieved the same effiency (it was 45% according to my pro-mash session).

I have since made that recipe again in an effect to answer your question. I have my own crusher now and regularly achieve 75-80%.

I believe that the beer made innefficiently was a bit maltier. Now there are more variables to look at but I know I did a single infusion at 152 degrees on both recipes.

To really prove this I wouldn't ferment anything and simply taste a lot of wort made with different crush and less mash/sparge time. I am willing to run thsi experiment if someonelse would and compare results we can both use the same grain.

Area51BrewCo said:

To really prove this I wouldn't ferment anything and simply taste a lot of wort made with different crush and less mash/sparge time. I am willing to run thsi experiment if someonelse would and compare results we can both use the same grain.

Click to expand...

My only concern is that it would be hard to taste the "flavor" as I think it might be masked too much by the sweetness of the wort. That being said, I'll probably try this anyway. I might even go ahead and ferment them out too.

pjj2ba said:

I might even go ahead and ferment them out too.

Click to expand...

I definitely would as the impact of alcohol, carbonation, etc, etc all are going to play their respective roles

No, I think the point is, you'd make a few batches all with the same exact OG but acheived by varying the total grain bill and the efficiency. For example and not to scale:

#1 1.053 OG with 10lbs grain at 70% efficiency
#2 1.052 OG with 8lbs at 85% efficiency

etc for as many as you could stand.

I think the way most of us make up for this expected phenomenon is to only scale recipes by base grain. I did see the comment about kilned base grains being flavor contributors and in that case you'd maybe want to vary your mix of those malts with any other rather benign bases.

Example; if you're trying to scale a recipe from 70% efficiency to your 90% and it had a mix of 50% 2-row and 50% Vienna, instead of cutting them equally down I might make it 60% Vienna and 40% 2-row at their new lower quantities.

Of course, not all recipes require this much figurin. I'm doing a Wit this weekend and it's made up of about half and half Pils and Wheat. I have to scale from 70 to 88% efficiency but I'm doing it linearly.

pjj2ba said:

It seems to me that a lot of people are focused on achieving greater and greater mash efficiencies, and that a low efficiency is bad. Certainly the more efficient the mash, the more formentable sugars you will get, the OG will be higher and you'll likely get more alcohol. But what about the flavor? Would you get more flavors from the malt in the final product if you used more base malt, but had less starch conversion (lower efficiency).

Click to expand...

Better efficiency = better crush + more sparging.
Both cause greater tanin extraction, and that means more of the harsh, astringent flavours in beer.

But efficiency has noting to do with fermentability.

Bobby_M said:

No, I think the point is, you'd make a few batches all with the same exact OG but acheived by varying the total grain bill and the efficiency. For example and not to scale:

#1 1.053 OG with 10lbs grain at 70% efficiency
#2 1.052 OG with 8lbs at 85% efficiency

etc for as many as you could stand.

Click to expand...

This is what I'm talking about. How different would these two hypothetical beers taste?

I know that Jamil Z. recommends for the Scottish ale series (60/,70/,80/) that you only change the amount of base malt. The amount of specialty malts does not change between the recipes.

I was looking in JZ's new book last night and it occurred to me mash time might be a good way to control the efficiency. It is easier to control than the crush. Earlier I mentioned my concern about how quickly the flavor compounds come out of the malt. Then I remembered back to my days of extract brewing and steeping grains. I never steeped for an hour. I looked in JZ's book to find what he recommends, and was astounded that I could not find it!!!!! This seems to me to be decent anecdotal data that maximum flavor can be obtained in less than 1 hr as most directions I see online recommend 30 min. for steeping.

pjj2ba said:

This is what I'm talking about. How different would these two hypothetical beers taste?

I know that Jamil Z. recommends for the Scottish ale series (60/,70/,80/) that you only change the amount of base malt. The amount of specialty malts does not change between the recipes.

I was looking in JZ's new book last night and it occurred to me mash time might be a good way to control the efficiency. It is easier to control than the crush. Earlier I mentioned my concern about how quickly the flavor compounds come out of the malt. Then I remembered back to my days of extract brewing and steeping grains. I never steeped for an hour. I looked in JZ's book to find what he recommends, and was astounded that I could not find it!!!!! This seems to me to be decent anecdotal data that maximum flavor can be obtained in less than 1 hr as most directions I see online recommend 30 min. for steeping.

Click to expand...

The way that I'd reduce my efficiency if I really wanted to would be to use a single batch sparge infusion and keep the temps relatively low like 170F. That seems to be the process that everyone uses to get 60-70%. It's modifications to that process that seem to give me more extraction. I wouldn't cut the mash short because you'll still pull unconverted starches out of the grain during the sparge.

Bobby_M said:

The way that I'd reduce my efficiency if I really wanted to would be to use a single batch sparge infusion . . . . I wouldn't cut the mash short because you'll still pull unconverted starches out of the grain during the sparge.

Click to expand...

To do this you'd have to start with a thinner mash to end up with the same final volume and the result would be a lower body, higher fermentable wort.

....or makeup the volume that is lost to absoption via a quasi mash-out infusion but at a lower temp. You wouldn't want to increase your effieciency with heat ;-)

If the mash tun is large enough to handle it, you could just make that single sparge infusion big enough for the volume you want.