Mash at 69 deg C - Humbug

Humbug's recipe for Hobgoblin Bitter specifies mash temperature 69 deg C. I thought 68 was top limit, so how high can you go and get an acceptable beer, ie full bodied, nice mouth feel, and SOME alcohol ?

i've heard of people mashing all the way up to 160F (71ish C). in practice, 156 (69ish C) is the upper limit for me, but i tend to like drier beers anyway.

I love it when he gets called Humbug.

There's no "hard" cutoff. Its a question of maximum enzyme activity:

The Theory of Mashing - Home Brewing Wiki

I mash up to 158F sometimes.

What would mash at for something like a sweet belgian or a scotch ale?

BOBTHEukBREWER said:

Humbug's recipe for Hobgoblin Bitter specifies mash temperature 69 deg C. I thought 68 was top limit, so how high can you go and get an acceptable beer, ie full bodied, nice mouth feel, and SOME alcohol ?

Click to expand...

In addition to the mash temp you also have to consider the beer's ingredients and your personal taste. Anything from 64C to 70C is "within limits" but 69C seems unusually high. I like 66-67C for that general style of brew. Mashing at the high end of the scale is not going to produce a beer with all body and no alcohol compared to one mashed at a lower temp range. The differences are not as drastic as an on-off switch. What have you used before and liked? Unless you have good reason to believe that particular beer must be mashed at 69C I would use a more conventional temp and then decide if you want to make adjustments to the next batch.

Alpha works best at 154-162F and beta at 130-150, so that's why people usually use 152,153 for a sach rest.

The way alpha works is by randomly breaking down the starches at any point in the chain. Beta can only take the molecules off the end one at a time. So alpha will actually convert faster than beta, but will leave more high chain dextrins. You can't taste these dexrins but they do lend to mouthfeel and a higher FG due to the yeast not being able to break them down either.

I use different mash temperatures all the time depending on how I want a beer to turn out. It's part of the control with AG brewing.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14-5.html

Charlie also has a really good section on this subject in TCJOHB.

SPECIFICALLY in the case of Orfy's Hobgoblin Clone, trust me - Mash where he says to. It's a delicious recipe.

In a general sense, the above info is great. Mash temp determines the body and profile of your beer, I've mashed as high as 158 with no problems.

I've no reservation about going as high as 163-165 for malty styles like Ole Speckled Hen.

I mashed my 10der & Mild at 160 for only 40 minutes to get that low OG beer to taste rich and malty.