Mash temps for DRY beers ?

Hey guys -

Several of the mash temp questions got me thinking. When I used to be brewing with coolers; I would typically target a 152 mash temp and go from there. About a year ago I got a fully loaded MoreBeer 2100 and after doing a lot more reading about different enzymes at different temps, modified my mash procedure. I will do 20 mins at 142, 20 mins at 148 and 20 mins at 152 (due to time changing temps; total mash time is typically 90 mins).

The beers I make now are much tastier, I think due to the dryness.

However, it seems a lot of people seem to panic if mash is under 152 degrees. Am I thinking about my method incorrectly or is there anything else I should be doing?

Effeciencies are around 70-75; although I think I need to adjust my crush a bit (Ive never been close to a stuck sparge). One of these days I need to buy the spark plug measurer to do it; just havent made it a priority as I dont mind using an extra pound of grain.


Feedback from friends is the beer tastes a lot better, more like a professional beer vs. a home brew.

What you are doing will maximize the fermentability of the wort, leaving less of a malty base and fewer residual sugars. Makes for a dry beer, which works well for some styles and not others. It would make a poor barleywine and a lousy Belgian, but is ideal for a dry stout (and apparently whatever you tend to make).

People worry about dropping below 152F because so many recipes call for mashing at 152F, without any leeway. Since full gelatinization occurs at 149F for barley starches, there really is some room for concern.

Anything could have changed over that time. More experience, better ferment temps, etc. Certainly mash temp is more related to the style of beer you're trying to make. I'd mash a Saison around 148 while an Irish Red would be more like 155. One thing you might try is going back to a single rest temp mash and see if the beer is still good.

There was a graph showing different temps for different kinds of enzymes from one of this years brew magazines. Because you can always go UP in temperature vs down (higher = new enzymes but kills the lower temp ones); my thought is you can fully optimize the malt flavors by capturing the simple sugars at lower temps and still complex sugars at higher temps (that cant be converted at lower temps)

On styles; its definitely been a pretty wide range recently including dry stouts -- but Ive also brewed an irish red 3x using these methods (currently have 20 gallons fermenting). I can definitely go back to experiement, but in reality if the beer tastes good to me and my brew buddy; thats really all that matters.

But from a theoretical side; high mash temps = many unfermentable sugars, whereas scaling up gets a little bit of all of them.

My fermentation technique has been consitent over the past few years with a large chest freezer coupled with a heater (winter) or plug it in with a temp control by measuring the actual temperature of the beer.

Does anyone else do it this way; or just me ?

david_42 said:

What you are doing will maximize the fermentability of the wort, leaving less of a malty base and fewer residual sugars. Makes for a dry beer, which works well for some styles and not others. It would make a poor barleywine and a lousy Belgian, but is ideal for a dry stout (and apparently whatever you tend to make).

People worry about dropping below 152F because so many recipes call for mashing at 152F, without any leeway. Since full gelatinization occurs at 149F for barley starches, there really is some room for concern.

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The most common mash temp I've seen recommended for Belgians is 149, I'm curious why you're saying otherwise.

My recent abbey of leffe bruin called for 150, but I thought the same thing, that maybe it should be a bit maltier like at 154. Then dry it up with belgian candy. But I'm a noob and just follow instructions.