Modified vs. Unmodified Malts

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ZacMac

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Can anyone give me the definition of a modified or unmodified malt. I am reading Charlie Papazian's book and he describes the infusion mash process but refers to well modified or unmodified malts. Can anyone shed some light on this subject. Thanks.
 
The modification of the malt refers to the length of the germination process and how many of the internal malt structures and compounds have already been broken down. The lesser modified the malt is, the more needs to be done in the mash. This is where deoction mashes and step mashes came from. But these days it is hard to come by malt that is less than well modified. Such malts work well in single infusion mashes.

Kai
 
Kaiser, is it safe to say that most malts ordered by mail or from homebrew shops will be modified malts and I shouldn't worry about whether or not they are? If I should be concerned, what should I look for in the description? If you can't tell I'm an extract brewer right now, but want to make the jump!
 
Don't worry. If you order run-of the mill malt you'll get well modified malt. That's what all of us do. As a matter of fact I'm trying to find less modified malt and have a hard time with that.

Kai
 
Kaiser said:
Don't worry. If you order run-of the mill malt you'll get well modified malt. That's what all of us do. As a matter of fact I'm trying to find less modified malt and have a hard time with that.

Kai
Kai, did you ever try the Breiss "undermodified" malt? At least I think it was Breiss. And it was really just less modified, as opposed to undermodified. I did a Pilsner with it, using a step mash, and was less than impressed. Of course, it was the one and only Pilsner I've done which is probably what led me to being underwhelmed as opposed to any quality of the malt.

I was just searching around on the web and can't find the malt I was talking about, so who knows.
 
Beerrific said:
Is this what you were looking for?
Yep, that's the one I was referring to. Thanks.

I bought 12# or so of it and did the Pilsner, but haven't gone back to it. With my current time constraints I'm just happy to be able brew and hang out here a bit, so fully modified (and batch sparging, naturally!) do the trick for me at the moment.
 
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