Mashing with too much water

Because I'm a *******, I ended up putting in too much cool water to bring my mash temp down, then had to add hot water to bring it back up, to the point where I've got too much water in my mash. Moreover, I added a little bit more water at the 30 minute mark to bring the temp back up to 154 (it had dropped to 150, seems I ended up being a little bit on the low side for the first half).

So, what are the implications of this? Am I going to be extracting more tannins or anything? The mash should have had about 2.5 gallons (a smidge more than eight pounds of grain x 1.25), it's probably around 3.25 now (MAYBE closer to 3.5, I don't think quite that much though).

So, besides me being a ******* (I need to be more careful about additions), anything else I should be worried about? My plan right now, unless someone tells me different in the next twenty-five minutes, is to cut back my batch-sparge water by approximately the amount of the extra 3/4 gallon in the mash.

Thoughts? Other than, YOU TOOL!

Not really...YOU TOOL! seems to sum it up nicely...Sorry I couldn't resist...

Won't that just make it a light brew?

Total water volume won't change. I was planning on having to top off a little at the end, and as noted, I won't sparge with quite as much water. Hopefully, my efficiency won't get completely killed.

I guess it should be OK then, just pour the sparging water slower through the grains might make up for any efficiency loss.

Batch sparge...

I think it'll be fine. I'm probably most concerned about whether tannins are more easily extracted with greater volumes of water (although my temp is nowhere near the "danger zone").

I'm glad you posted that question because as of 15 minutes ago I did the EXACT same thing! I'm hoping it works for me as well by lowering the volume of sparge water. My problem was that my temp was too low and so I had to add hot water, several times because I forgot to follow that simple rule of "have extra hot water on hand and ready."

Sorry I couldn't help with a solution, but it may help that I'm a TOOL too!!

A thinner mash will give the enzymes more room to move. In other words, your wort may be a bit more fermentable than you planned on it being. Since you mashed in at a higher temp, I assume that you wanted a more dextrinous wort, a higher final gravity, and a beer with substantial body and mouthfeel. Well, your higher water to grain ratio may result in a thinner beer with a bit less mouthfeel. On the bright side, however, you will have a lower final gravity and a slightly stronger beer. Chances are you may never notice any of this; further, your beer will be fine.

In the future, you should pull some of the wort off of your mash, put it on some heat and bring your entire mash back to termperature with this bit of wort. This would be something like a decoction, and it will help you maintain the water to grain ratio you were aiming for.

Thanks!

I was aiming for a middle-of-the-road temp. My initial strike came in at around 158, I didn't want this beer to be terribly sweet so I attempted the temp drop. I do suspect that it may be a little light in mouthfeel, because the mash temp for the first half hour ended up on the low end of the range as well.

Oh well, live and learn. Only my second mash, I've got plenty of time to get this stuff right!

Now, if I had a three-tier setup with a burner under my mash tun.........

You should just tell people that you were doing a new step mashing technique.

I was just doing some of my sparge ahead of time...

too thin of a mash will result in more unfermentables in your beer. Kind of like mashing too hot.

Alrighty, we've got conflicting answers now.

Sonvolt - enzymes have more room to work, i.e. MORE fermentable wort, thinner beer

Chimone - more unfermentables, presumably beer with MORE body.

DEATH MATCH!

Yeah relax, you're totally fine man.

Actually I was just reading about this. Let me go get my textbook, and re-read so I don't look too much like an ass if Im wrong.


ding ding

http://byo.com/feature/480.html

This should clear a few things up.

High mash temperatures favor a less fermentable wort because alpha-amylase is a lot more stable than beta-amylase is at higher temperatures. This means that there will be less production of maltose as the activity of beta-amylase diminishes. It is hard to say that beta-amylase activity will be expected to drop off at a particular temperature, because the thickness will determine what temperature activates maximum beta-amylase activity. Thicker mashes tend to retain more beta-amylase activity at high mash temperatures than do thin mashes. This is because beta-amylase is more stable when joined with its substrate than when it is not.

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Crabmeat, you've been a huge help with this beer (I should send you one when it's ready), but I have NO IDEA what that paragraph means.

When the mash is thicker, the beta enzymes are more protected at higher temps, leading to a more fermentable wort.

It's perfectly clear...

So a thin mash at a relatively low temp.... a much less fermentable wort?

Well not so much. Beta enzymes don't need to be protected at lower temps, so the thickness of the mash has less affect down there. Betas are responsible for making more fermentable sugars, think of it as the more of them you have the more frementable sugars you'll get. When it gets too hot, they stop working.

Low temp=highly fermentable.

You really don't need to worry all that much about it. Just learn your system at a specific water/grist ratio and control the wort characteristics with mash temp only. Uhhh... Next time.

I thought that John Palmer's book indicates that thinner mash temps will yield more fermentable wort . . .

. . .

sonvolt said:

I thought that John Palmer's book indicates that thinner mash temps will yield more fermentable wort . . .

. . .

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That may be but I can't say because I don't measure temperature in thickness.

Well, it looks like I got my efficieny up a bit. OG was 1.057, temp adjusted this works out to 70% - 72%, up from 64 on my first attempt. I'd really like to get up to the 75% - 80% range, I know, all that matters is that I'm consistent, but still - pride, you know?

Grats on the efficiency. Im right at 73-74% everytime. Which works for me.

As for re-reading, well I brought the wrong book to work today. I have so many books I have to read before class starts, Im starting to get confused about which is which. Ill try and find that paragraph I read about the mash thickness and post it later on this afternoon.

Chairman Cheyco said:

That may be but I can't say because I don't measure temperature in thickness.

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lol lol

Been there, done that, got the t shirt. Mine's in the secondary now. May be a little lighter than I wanted, but dammit I'm goin to drink it!

from what i read in "principles of brewing science," a thinner mash will promote amylase (so you'll get a more fermentable wort) but inhibits proteinase reactions - so you might have more protein haze, etc.

I think I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion. I'm on "watching offspring" duty and hence can't grab my bible, I mean Noonan, but I say a thick mash produces a less fermentable wort while a thin mash produces a more fermentable wort.

I agree a thicker mash protects the enzymes better and gives them more substrate to attach to which will result in fast conversion, will favor beta, and that beta does make the fermentable sugars. However, beta needs alpha to "roughly" chop things up before it can get to work making the rough things into fermentable things. Hence, a thin mash which will favor alpha will result in more material for beta to work with and make fermentable, but it will take a longer time.

Just my 2 pesos!

hunteraw said:

from what i read in "principles of brewing science," a thinner mash will promote amylase (so you'll get a more fermentable wort) but inhibits proteinase reactions - so you might have more protein haze, etc.

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There are actually two types of amylase we need to be concerned with when we talk about mashing: alpha & beta. Ideally, we'd like to be able to favor both in a perfectly controlled fashion to make a wort exactly as fermentable as we'd like (in practice this is a little difficult for a homebrewer, but still something to shoot for).

Alpha is needed to break up the larger chains in the mash into smaller pieces. Beta is responsible for making the bulk of the fermentable sugars, but can only work on the smaller pieces.

So obviously, we want to do an alpha rest first, and then a beta, right? The problem is that beta is favored at a lower temperature and alpha at a higher temperature...the opposite of what we need.

When people do single infusion mashes, i.e., 149-158F or so, what they are striking is a compromise between alpha and beta activity ranges. A lower temperature will favor beta over alpha and result in a more fermentable wort while a higher range will favor alpha and result in a less fermentable wort (chains broken into larger pieces, not as fermentable).j

Step mashes are designed to hover in certain enzyme activity ranges for specified amounts of time to gain even more control over the process.

I wonder where the Kaiser is...3...2...1...

I was thinking about experimenting with doing a partial-mash rest at 158ish and then add another volume (say half) of grist and water to bring the temp down to 144ish. Thus, you could kinda do an alpha rest first.

Also BG, earlier in the thread mash thickness was being heavily intertwined with mash temperature, and confusion reigned on high for a while.

Chairman Cheyco said:

Also BG, earlier in the thread mash thickness was being heavily intertwined with mash temperature, and confusion reigned on high for a while.

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Unpossible!

Baron von BeeGee said:

I think I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion. I'm on "watching offspring" duty and hence can't grab my bible, I mean Noonan, but I say a thick mash produces a less fermentable wort while a thin mash produces a more fermentable wort.

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Yeah . . . isn't this what I was saying . . .?

sonvolt said:

Yeah . . . isn't this what I was saying . . .?

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I think so...but I didn't say I was dissenting with everybody!

Chairman Cheyco said:

Also BG, earlier in the thread mash thickness was being heavily intertwined with mash temperature, and confusion reigned on high for a while.

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Sorry, leave it to me to screw EVERYTHING up. Too much water and I still can't hit my temp...

the_bird said:

Sorry, leave it to me to screw EVERYTHING up. Too much water and I still can't hit my temp...

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There is very little temperature control is basket weaving, thus leaving you to concentrate entirely on reed thickness. Have you considered changing hobbies?

Entirely new to the science of mashing. Do the terms thick and thin refer to the amount of water added to the mash?

If this is the case, does more water mean more fermentable cause the emzymes have more room to convert starch to sugar.

I think I got this right........right?

oooFishy said:

If this is the case, does more water mean more fermentable cause the emzymes have more room to convert starch to sugar.

I think I got this right........right?

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That looks like the general consensus. However, trying to control the fermentability of the wort through alteration of the mash thickness is spotty at best since you still need to manage your temperature. Makes the most sense to me to keep the thickness the same for every batch and eliminate one more variable.

Chairman Cheyco said:

That looks like the general consensus. However, trying to control the fermentability of the wort through alteration of the mash thickness is spotty at best since you still need to manage your temperature. Makes the most sense to me to keep the thickness the same for every batch and eliminate one more variable.

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Agreed...I think temperature is probably the single most important factor in terms of fermentability, followed by pH, some other stuff I don't know about, and then mash thickness (assuming a consistent grind across all experiments).

The Kaiser swayed me to the German way of thinking that controlling fermentability accurately and consistently is best accomplished via separate beta and alpha rests. And I still don't get it right (but I do get beer)...

Baron von BeeGee said:

Agreed...I think temperature is probably the single most important factor in terms of fermentability, followed by pH, some other stuff I don't know about, and then mash thickness (assuming a consistent grind across all experiments).

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LOL, is there such a category? I'll take 'some other stuff I don't know about' for 500, Alex.

OK, here's the question:

What other than PH and mash thickness makes Begee's beer so bad.

Sir Sudster said:

OK, here's the question:

What other than PH and mash thickness makes Begee's beer so bad.

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Maybe I should wash my hands and not sneeze in the kettle so much?