Preparing a Corn Mash

Hello,
I am making my next brew, and I am this time adding corn to it. I was wondering how you prepare the corn. I read you can use flaked corn, and just add it to the brew, but if you are using whole corn you need to cook the corn in a cereal cooker to gelatinize the starches. I was wondering if using regular canned corn would be ok, and just adding it to the mash.

C-man:

Flaked maize (corn) is gelatinized in the flaking process so you can put it directly into the main mash with the malts you're using. I've done this three times now with good success for an American pale ale I make; there's plenty of enzyme power to convert the corn starch to fermentables.

If you use corn meal, you have to do a cereal mash to gelatinize the starch capsules and start to break down the starches to lower molecular weight. The hot water in the cereal mash will do the former, and the little bit of malt you put in will do the latter, so you don't have a thick lump of goo to try to add to the main mash for lautering.

I never heard of using canned corn, but I would guess it needs to be processed like the corn meal. The other issue I would have with canned corn is the possible presence of corn oil. The flaked maize and the corn meal are de-germed meaning the oily part of the kernel is removed, and they don't have much oil in them. I have no idea how much oil is in the canned corn, so I wouldn't use it myself. Also, I don't know what the taste would be like, it might be very different from the dried corn products.

Yup...just get flaked corn from the brew shop or wherever you get your grain....they will mix it right in and you'll not even need to worry about it.

What's the rest of your recipe?

Corn grits are often used and is much cheaper than "flaked maze" at the local home brew store (LHBS). I've read that it must be cooked separately with some malted barley as a cereal mash then added to the regular mash and I've read you can add it directly to the mash.

If you read here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-2.html

John Palmer says you can add grits directly with the mash he makes no mention of a cereal cooker. That's the way I do it. I simply add a lb. to my 10 gal mash tun. And since I live in and was raised in south there's always some grits in the cupboard.

I also would advise against using whole corn from a can. You'd definately need to do a cereal mash with whole corn. If you are bound and determined to use whole corn, if it were me I'd use frozen corn rather than canned. You'd also need to mush the corn up to get the sugars out, leaving the kurnels intact you'll lose a bunch of sugar you want to extract.

BigKahuna said:

What's the rest of your recipe?

Click to expand...

4 lbs Canadian Malt
3 lbs Light DME

2 oz common hops (bittering)
1 oz " " (aroma)
Then, of course, there will be the flaked corn. I still have to figure out how much I will put in.

The recipe is still in draft so-to-speak. I'm working out further details later, as my hops are being grown, and the fruit needs to still mature.

I would use about 2 # or so....Just see BierMunchers Cream of 3 crops recipe and modicy it to fit your desire.

I used flaked maize in my last batch. (light lager) two pounds with five pounds 2 row. lagered it and it came out awesome for a light beer imho.

celtic_man81 said:

4 lbs Canadian Malt
3 lbs Light DME

2 oz common hops (bittering)
1 oz " " (aroma)
Then, of course, there will be the flaked corn. I still have to figure out how much I will put in.

The recipe is still in draft so-to-speak. I'm working out further details later, as my hops are being grown, and the fruit needs to still mature.

Click to expand...

sounds like a good cream ale. i would agree with the 2 lbs BigKahuna suggested.

I just made a Classic American Pilsner. I wasn't able to get enough flaked corn from my LHBS so I did what is called a double mash. I mashed my corn grits at 153*with 20% of my grain bill for 20 minutes. I then boiled that mash for 45 minutes to completely gelatinize the grits. I used a step mash on the rest of the grain bill and started at 120*for 30 minutes. I then added the boiling mash to it to bring my total mash to 148* where It stayed for an additional 60 minutes. Then I mashed out and batch sparged as usual.

Hope that helps.