Intentionally unfermentable?

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cheezydemon

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On a PM, if you were getting plenty of fermentables from DME, would it potentially improve the flavor if you mashed the grains at 160 or so?

They would provide less fermentable material and therefore would leave more unfermentable, and therefore more real grain flavor, right?

Just a thought.

Also, could you brew an N/A beer this way? (AG of course)
 
No, no, no. Listen to the discussion towards the beginning of JZ's Munich Helles show. Then listen to it again. Malt/grain flavor does not correlate with sweetness/residual sugar in any way. I won't go through it all, because Jamil and Jon really do a good job of covering all the bases. In essence, though, malt flavor is achieved through several avenues and combinations thereof. One is melanoidin production. If you wanna see what melanoidin is, take two pieces off bread and toast one of them. The toastiness from the heated bread is the melanoidins. Melanoidins are created in any beer, but you can accentuate them by using melanoidin malt and/or doing a decoction mash. Two is the types of grain used and how they were malted. Three is your yeast, which can either accentuate or mask malt flavors.

A beer with more unfermentable sugars left over will be sweeter and have more body, but it won't have anything to do with malt or grain flavor. As JZ explains in the link above, you can have really sweet beers that are not malty at all, and you can have really dry beers that are very malty indeed. There is really no correlation between the two.

Cheers! :mug:
 
^ That is about the best explanation I have seen posted. Agreed listening to the podcast linked will better explain it though.
 
I tend to do PM on the low side to maximize the fermentability. I figure the extract has plenty. If you want major malt flavor/aroma, buy some Aromatic Malt.
 
actually, I'd like to get some advice on this sort of thing - how to make a low alcohol beer (3%?) with full malt flavor/body. Generally - low alcohol means less fermentables, means less flavor, no?
 
No, that's not right at all, tranceamerica. Read Evan!'s post again. Malt flavor has nothing to do with alcohol content.
 
tranceamerica said:
actually, I'd like to get some advice on this sort of thing - how to make a low alcohol beer (3%?) with full malt flavor/body. Generally - low alcohol means less fermentables, means less flavor, no?
Click to expand...


Think about commercial beers, take guinness for example it is low in alcohol content and high in malty flavor and goodness. If only there was a way to get them to add more hoppy goodness...
 
There's a lot of different issues floating around here.

You can get more flavor out of a small grain bill by using specialty grains with a lot of flavor - using Munich or Vienna as a base malt, or some melanoidin malt and some dark crystal malts. Those will give you much more flavor than a base 2-row for the same amount of malt.

There's definately a difference between sweetness and maltiness; compare a sweetish English beer (something like a Hobgoblin) with a good example of a Maibock/Oktoberfest or similar German lager. The English beers (which tend to use more crystal malt) have what I perceive as a candy-like sweetness, whereas the German beers have a deeper, maltiness (more bready). They can be sweet, but something quaffable like an Oktoberfest is still fairly dry while still being really sweet.

Guiness is another example of a way to make a small beer that has a lot of flavor, using a grain (roasted barley) that's got a very potent flavor.
 
the_bird said:
They can be sweet, but something quaffable like an Oktoberfest is still fairly dry while still being really sweet.
Click to expand...

Whatchootalkinbout, jaybird!? Dry is the opposite of sweet. Either it's really dry, or it's really sweet, or it's somewhere in between---but saying that something's really dry and really sweet at the same time is kind of like saying something is really blue and really red at the same time. Either it's really red, or really blue, or it's a shade of purple.

I think maybe you meant to say "still fairly dry while still being really malty". Or perhaps you're referring to mouthfeel? :confused:
 
You caught me - trying to do too many things at once!

I meant to write "dry while still being malty."

I will say, though... I had a swartzbier the other night that had some kinda-sweet notes to it, yet was quite dry and extremely drinkable. Some darker-sweet, dark-fruit notes, yet the finish was very dry.

EXPLAIN THAT TO ME!
 
the_bird said:
You caught me - trying to do too many things at once!

I meant to write "dry while still being malty."

I will say, though... I had a swartzbier the other night that had some kinda-sweet notes to it, yet was quite dry and extremely drinkable. Some darker-sweet, dark-fruit notes, yet the finish was very dry.

EXPLAIN THAT TO ME!
Click to expand...

A combo of malty melanoidins, fruity esters from the yeast and minute dextrins can give the impression of sweet notes to a dry beer. It's an issue I also see in the wine world quite a bit: fruit-driven wines are perceived as sweet, even though the residual sugar content is quite low. It's got a lot to do with our associations and perceptions when it comes to taste. Fruit is usually sweet, so we associate fruit flavors with sweetness, even if sugar levels are low.
 
Hell of a lot of good info. Thanks Evan.

As to the NA question. So an intentionally unfermentable brew(mashed at high temps) would be pretty sweet, but not very malty?
 
Evan! said:
No, no, no. Listen to the discussion towards the beginning of JZ's Munich Helles show. Then listen to it again. Malt/grain flavor does not correlate with sweetness/residual sugar in any way. I won't go through it all, because Jamil and Jon really do a good job of covering all the bases. In essence, though, malt flavor is achieved through several avenues and combinations thereof. One is melanoidin production. If you wanna see what melanoidin is, take two pieces off bread and toast one of them. The toastiness from the heated bread is the melanoidins. Melanoidins are created in any beer, but you can accentuate them by using melanoidin malt and/or doing a decoction mash. Two is the types of grain used and how they were malted. Three is your yeast, which can either accentuate or mask malt flavors.

A beer with more unfermentable sugars left over will be sweeter and have more body, but it won't have anything to do with malt or grain flavor. As JZ explains in the link above, you can have really sweet beers that are not malty at all, and you can have really dry beers that are very malty indeed. There is really no correlation between the two.

Cheers! :mug:
Click to expand...

FWIW, also discussed in "Brewing Classic Styles", in case anyone wants to go all old school and read, like, a book...
 
cheezydemon said:
Hell of a lot of good info. Thanks Evan.

As to the NA question. So an intentionally unfermentable brew(mashed at high temps) would be pretty sweet, but not very malty?
Click to expand...

Lol, sorry, I didn't want this to get lost.
 
cheezydemon said:
Hell of a lot of good info. Thanks Evan.

As to the NA question. So an intentionally unfermentable brew(mashed at high temps) would be pretty sweet, but not very malty?
Click to expand...

not necessarily malty. Could be malty, could not. Depends on the factors I mentioned.

Regardless, you don't make N/A beer by making sweet unfermentable wort. you make a beer as you would normally, ferment it out, then put it into a pot and heat it to 180f and leave it there for 30 minutes. The boiling point of ethanol is much lower than h2o---it's around 171-173f. So heating it to 180f for 30 minutes will "boil" off the alcohol. I made a couple batches for my dad like this. Just be sure to dry-hop it after you remove the ethanol, because heating to 180 will also boil off much of the hop flavor & aroma.

:mug:
 
cheezydemon said:
Hell of a lot of good info. Thanks Evan.

As to the NA question. So an intentionally unfermentable brew(mashed at high temps) would be pretty sweet, but not very malty?
Click to expand...

It's going to depend on the grains. What you get from high mash temps are long-chain dextrines, which are basically without flavor or sweetness (ever eat a spoonful of maltodextrine?). Now, if your grains are crystal malts, you'll pull their inherent sweetness out (remember, they've already had their sugars converted in the process of making them).

I'm not about discouraging experimentation, but I'm not sure what you're ultimate goal is here. You want a sweet beer, use a lot of crystal malt (which doesn't ferment out very much, anyway). You want more MALT flavor (without necessarily being sweet), use Munich, melanoidin, Aromatic, those kinds of malts in your PM. You want dark, complex, sweet flavors, use Special B, Crytal 120, stuff like that.

EDIT: If you want to make a real NA beer, talk to BierMuncher, he's done so with some success.
 
Right on Bird, my initial goal was a PM that got the most malt flavor from a small amount of malt possible. The NA thing was kind of a semi-related point of interest.
 
Good discussion.

the_bird said:
You want a sweet beer, use a lot of crystal malt (which doesn't ferment out very much, anyway).
Click to expand...

The attenuation of the yeast also plays a role here. Less attenuative yeasts will leave more fermentable sugars behind. These sugars add to the sweetness. Also, don't forget the bitterness as it compensates sweetness (to some extend) a less bitter beer will seem sweeter than the same beer with more IBUs.

Kai
 
I do not like sweet beer in general, but I am a huge fan of crystal malt......does this mean I have multiple beer personality disorder? I like the caramel notes.
 
If something tastes sweet, it is sweet, even if it contains no sugar.

Dry beers can also be sweet. Whether or not that is a result of sugar or a result of combinations of a million different chemical compounds is irrelevant (unless you consider it a flaw and are trying to figure out how to fix it, then the source of the perceived sweetness is rather important).

I have never really understood when people say that dry and sweet are mutually exclusive, when really
 
Part of the confusion comes from the fact that "dry" can describe flavor, and "dry" can describe mouthfeel. When describing flavor, "dry" is the opposite of sweet, so a beer cannot taste sweet and dry at the same time. However, that beer can taste sweet but have a dry mouthfeel.

Also, many beers start sweet but finish dry. That also confuses some drinkers who want to describe the beer but do not understand how to describe how flavors change chronologically (e.g., describing the finish).


TL
 
Aso confusing , is that something dry many times is higher proportionally in alcohol, and lower in unfermentables, but this is just a trait of some beers or wines that are dry, not a definition of "dry" it's self.
 

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