Mash thickness during protein rest

I'm doing a pumpkin wheat this weekend. Grain bill below. I'll be mashing the roasted pumpkin, and because of all the wheat along with the pumpkin i'm thinking it'd be best to do a protein rest. the problem i'm facing is my H2O/Grain ratio. my MLT is a cooler, so to get to my sacc rest temp i'll need to add quite a bit of boiling water, but i don't want a super thin mash. is a ratio of .75 q/lb enough for a protein rest? here are the numbers i've worked out so far, tell me what you think.

5.50 lbs grain, 0.50 lbs pumpkin
mash-in with 4q @ 142F for 122F, 30min (.73q/lb).
add 4q @ 199.6F (nearly boiling at my elevation) for 155F, 45min (1.45q/lb)

Grain Bill:

1.75lbs Pale 2row
1.50lbs White Wheat Malt
1.00lbs Caramel Wheat Malt
0.50lbs Crystal 20L
0.50lbs Gambrinus Honey Malt
0.25lbs CaraPils

0.50lbs Pumpkin Flesh, Roasted

Have you thought about adding some spice to that brew? I made a very similar brew but added a tablespoon of Pumpkin spice 1/lb of grain and it really added to the aroma and aftertaste. I like the honey malt add. let us know how it ends up.

i plan to add spices, but as that wasn't pertinent to the question i left that out of the post.

0.75 qt/lb is a bit thick but may work. I generally go with 1.0 qt/lb. You can go for up to 2.0 qt/lb after your step addition without any problem. With 2.25 pounds of various crystal malts in this recipe, you don't really need to worry about getting all the way up to 155°. You will have plenty of unfermentable sugars to give the sweetness you want in this brew.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

You could go with a thinner mash at protein rest, and use a decoction to get to your sacc temp.

Or maybe you could just mash the wheat malts at protein rest temps, and add the rest of the grains when you raise to sacc temps? Not sure why that wouldn't work, though it makes your temp calcs a little tougher.

I've done a couple batches with that thickness...I've noticed 2 things.. One mash at a lower temp then you were planning to, and no matter what you do your efficiency will take a **** on you.. That's just my experience

Am I reading this wrong, or is your entire grain bill 5.5#? Are you adding malt extract? If not, you are going to have a very low ABV beer.

My bad, i neglected to say it's for a 3 gallon batch. beersmith says 1054, plus whatever the pumpkin adds.

jesse, thanks for using * to save my virgin eyes, but i can't for the life of me think of a naughty word to put in there that completes your sentence; you must have some vocabulary! anyway, i presume you mean to say that my efficiency will take a hit. the thickness of .75 q/lb is only for the protein rest, and the only reason it's so low is so i can add enough water to get it up to sacc rest temps. once i raise the temp my ratio will be 1.5 q/lb, so based on your experience do you still think that this will effect my efficiency? i have considered starting the mash in my kettle, and just firing it to sacc temps then dumping it into my MLT. i'd prefer not to though. i have a few lbs of rahr 2-row sitting around that i wont be using so i crushed a lb of it and added .75 q water, just to see what the thickness would be like; there was definitely some water to spare, so i think this will be ok. the other thing is that, season wise, it's way late for a pumpkin beer, so this is really just an experimental brew because i have a wheat yeast cake to pitch onto.

thanks for the replies, let me know what you think.

Well, I asked a similar question a while ago and got these responses.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=39318

It seems that a protein rest at .75 quarts/lb is fine. I wish I could tell you if this actually worked for me or not, but I tried this experiment on my dunkelweizen, and I got crap efficiency due to a stuck sparge (I only later learned about rice hulls). Let us know if it works out.

Also, the thread has some great suggestions for building heat infused mash tuns.

i've been sweating a stuck sparge on this one. can you tell me if rice hulls add any sugar? if not, i might add a lb or so. i'm not too far from building a HERMS, i already have a coil, all i need is a pump, some polysufone QD's and tube, and another fitting welded into my MLT. when does it end!!

When i do a protein rest, i dump in the amount of water that i will mash with, but then again, i do my mashes in a kettle that can be heated. i think at this low of a ratio, your protein conversion will be too low and you may suffer when it comes time to lauter. if possible, try to do the protein rest at the normal mash volume and heat it in a kettle, if you can. stuck mashes are no fun. with over 2# wheat for a 3 gal batch, you may run into some pretty nasty lautering issues. i made a wheat batch once (about 5# wheat for 5 gal.) that took over 4 hours to sparge-talk about a stuck mash!

Quoyte from Dave Miller (http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue2.5/miller.html)

Other research suggests that mash thickness is a critical parameter. Most infusion mashes (single or step) are run pretty thin, which is appropriate for starch conversion. For protein conversion, however, the mash must be stiff. George Fix has suggested that what he calls a "homebrew mash" - running the protein rest thick, then infusing with boiling water to raise the temperature to starch conversion range. This may be the ideal method because it creates optimum conditions for both sets of enzymes (proteases and amylases).

I must admit that I never do protein rests, but I believe Fix and Miller (especially when they both agree).

-a.

Hmm, that's good to know. It seems then that protein rests actually benefit from being thick. I think I may have to try this on my next batch, and do a two step infusion. I think hitting .75 for the protein, then 1.25 to 1.5 for the starch conversion rest should be plausible.