decoction mash out in cooler

Hey guys,

I have started doing a mash out even though i have been told that when batch sparging it isn't necessary. I noticed I was over-attenuating and getting a thin body on all my beers and after reading up on it I decided I might be sparging too slowly and allowing the wort to drop in temp before getting it up to a boil (i take a long time sparging and i read the enzymes keep working over this period).

Anyways, Instead of doing an infusion of boiling water to reach mash out I was wondering how I can go about doing a decoction to mash out. How do I calculate how much wort to pull from the mash to reach mash out temps? Would I pull a thick decoction with grains, or just drain liquid wort into a pot and boil it?

I have never done any sort of decoction step, so this will be my first experience with it.

my set up is just a cooler mash tun with a bazooka screen. I have a 10 gal boil kettle which i use to heat up my strike and sparge water, as well as the boil itself. I drain first runnings into a bucket, then pour in my sparge water, then transfer from bucket to kettle. then i sparge to into the bucket and transfer that to the kettle as well.

thanks for any advice!

Decoction calculator:

http://www.franklinbrew.org/tools/decoction2.html

Decoction math:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Decoction_Mashing


I've done only a few decoctions, but for a mashout decoction it's usually on the thinner side, however you still want some grains.

motobrewer said:

Decoction calculator:

http://www.franklinbrew.org/tools/decoction2.html

Decoction math:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Decoction_Mashing


I've done only a few decoctions, but for a mashout decoction it's usually on the thinner side, however you still want some grains.

Click to expand...

OK.

I have actually figured out where to calculate the amount in beersmith, I'm not sure how I didn't see it before.

I'm just wondering since i am pulling wort from the mash and boiling it, should i do my sacc rest with a higher water/grain ratio than i normally would?

Typically I would do something like 1.25 qt/lb @152 for 60 minutes then drain and sparge.

in this case if i were to start with 1.25 qt/lb and then pull off ~8 qts for a decoction mash out that would leave very little wort in the mash tun...

I'm thinking of boosting the qt/lb to something like 1.75 or maybe even higher so that I can drain off the amount for decoction and still leave enough liquid behind?

Is this correct procedure? are there downsides to doing a higher water grain ratio like this? What do people normally do?

thanks for taking the time to help. I'm brewing tonight so hopefully i can figure this out today, otherwise i might bail and just do a standard mash out.

I have done several decoctions although I won't proclaim to be any kind of expert. But if memory serves, the mashout step is supposed to be comprised of roughly 1/3 the mash volume of THIN mash -- mostly just liquid with little grain. As soon as that hits a boil, dump that back into your main mash and hope that it hit around 170 F, assuming you started from high 150s F or so. This is ballpark figures, if I remember correctly, based on what I've read in the past from Kai Troester. Read more on his site referenced earlier if you're interested.

I still don't know for certain if decoction is beneficial. But what I can tell you is that the best lager I ever made that scored well in contests.... was triple decocted. More experiments are needed. I tried to run an experiment in the past of decoction vs. single infusion, but the single infusion portion got contaminated. I need to run this again soon.

I do think a higher water to grain ratio is helpful for decoction mashing. I aim for roughly 1.75 to 2 qt/lb.

dmtaylor said:

Lots of great info

Click to expand...

Great thanks! I think I have a pretty good idea of what my process is going to be at this point

I am still concerned about mashing in with a 1.75 qt/lb or higher ratio.. I am reading conflicting information on what a thin mash like that will do.

Ultimately I am having an issue with over attenuating most of my beers and getting a thinner drier product. I dont want to thin out the mash and exacerbate the problem...

A thin mash doesn't hurt a dang thing, not at all. No adverse impacts on body or attenuation or anything like that. Try it and see. There's a lot of old myths out there that just won't die. Ignore and move on, experiment for yourself, and you'll see. Decoction mashing especially is an extremely forgiving process. You can screw up every decoction step along the way and in the end still make an excellent beer. I know -- I've done it.

Oh, hey, by the way....... if you are doing a protein rest at all, DON'T!!! Protein rest is not necessary with 21st century malts, and will kill your body and head retention every single time!!!!! Don't do it!!!! I learned the hard way. Skip the 122-132 F temperature range altogether and it will turn out fine.

dmtaylor said:

A thin mash doesn't hurt a dang thing, not at all. No adverse impacts on body or attenuation or anything like that. Try it and see. There's a lot of old myths out there that just won't die. Ignore and move on, experiment for yourself, and you'll see. Decoction mashing especially is an extremely forgiving process. You can screw up every decoction step along the way and in the end still make an excellent beer. I know -- I've done it.

Oh, hey, by the way....... if you are doing a protein rest at all, DON'T!!! Protein rest is not necessary with 21st century malts, and will kill your body and head retention every single time!!!!! Don't do it!!!! I learned the hard way. Skip the 122-132 F temperature range altogether and it will turn out fine.

Click to expand...

Thanks man. I will try it with a thinner mash. Beersmith is telling me that if i mash in at 1.5 qt/lb then when i take the decoction i will still have 1.00 qt/lb left behind in the tun. That's good enough for me i think?

Really the only reason I'm doing this is because the process seems a little more interesting than just boiling some water and dumping it in for a mash out. Although I guess at the end of the day its not really that different ha. Just an experiment i guess

i wouldn't get so hung up on mash thickness. If you're having overattenuation problems i'd look to mash temp and how consistent it is over the duration and how consistent it is within the tun (hot/cold spots).

i don't share the same hatred of protein rests that dmtaylor has but I certainly stay toward the higher end (131F) than lower. And it's generally short.

just wanted to say thanks for the advice. I brewed last night and it was dead simple and fun to do this decoction mash out. i mashed in with a 1.5 qt/lb ratio and pulled about 2 gallons for decoction at 45 minutes (after passing iodine test). boiled and returned to tun and hit 167 degrees so just a LITTLE bit off. rest of brew day went as normal.
my efficiency was 85% and usually its just over 80% so a little bump there. We'll see if it helps with my over attenuating issue.

cheers and thanks again !

Sweet! Glad the process worked well for you and you enjoyed it. I really don't know if decoction helps flavor... but it sure is a fun process anyway! I still do it on most of my lagers just for the fun of it if nothing else. Also it helps that I brew only about 2 gallons at a time, so it's way way faster and easier to do in small batches than with the standard 5 or more gallons. If I run out, I can easily make more!

I rewatched a brewing tv episode about decoction mashing. He pulled 1 qt of thick mash for every pound of grist. He drained the thick mash against the mash tun before putting it into another kettle.

For the mash out he drained the thin mash, brought to a boil, then added it back into the thick mash.

I've been thinking about getting into decoction mashing for my maltier beers. I think I'm going to do a red ale and double decoction that bad boy.