Mashing Corn Meal

For this Saturday's big brew day I am making a corm mini mash to compare white corn to yellow corn to add to our wort. Can I gelatinize the corn by boiling it and then mash it with some two row? This makes more sense to me than a cereal mash, holding it at 150 with 2 row for 15 minutes and then boiling. Won't boiling release tannins from the grain?

I have never understood why people do a mini mash at all when using corn or rice as an adjunct. If you fully cook the corn before adding to the mash then why would you add barley and try and convert it pre mash. The object is to make the starches soluble for the enzymes in the barley to do their job. Why would you do this twice. I have experimented with adjuncts and found it to be not necessary to do a mini mash. I like your experiment however I have decided that I like regular instant corn grits cooked on the stove at about 3 quarts per pound. With certain false bottoms or manifolds corn grits can be messy.

I did an experiment where I took pregelatinized flaked rice and regular rice. In one batch I added the pregelatinized rice to my mash. The second I cooked the same amount by weight of regular rice from the grocery store on the stove and then added it to my mash. My points came out identical. I also did the same with corn.

In this case I have to do a mini mash because the brewery is making the wort for us so we can only add steeped grains or items that were mashed ahead of time.

pfi309 said:

In this case I have to do a mini mash because the brewery is making the wort for us so we can only add steeped grains or items that were mashed ahead of time.

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Hmm. I am confused. Why you can only add items that are pre mashed? If if the starches in the corn are cooked down and then added to the mash it will convert to maltose by the enzymes in the grains of the mash.

Are you pre mashing to decide which corn to add later?

I've used canned creamed corn in a couple different mashes since it's basically gelitinized during the canning and sterilization process.. It converted fine but then I said screw it and just started using corn starch

pfi309 said:

In this case I have to do a mini mash because the brewery is making the wort for us so we can only add steeped grains or items that were mashed ahead of time.

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Um, corn adds no flavor and little to no color so you can just add sugar to get the same effect!! Rice is the same!!

They are making a 1000 gallon wort batch that is being split among the club, not sure how much enzyme activity will be left when I get my portion so thought it would be wise to premash the corn and add it before we boil.

We are converting into to 5 gallon batches of cream ale.

pfi309 said:

They are making a 1000 gallon wort batch that is being split among the club, not sure how much enzyme activity will be left when I get my portion so thought it would be wise to premash the corn and add it before we boil.

We are converting into to 5 gallon batches of cream ale.

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Ahhh! I see. I missed the part about the "brewery". Why not just add corn sugar to your boil? Good luck.