Diastatic Power (malt analysis)

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menschmaschine

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Is there a way to calculate °Lintner or °WK (Windisch-Kolbach) from a German malt analysis that has no Diastatic Power listed?
 
If diastatic power is not listed in either unit of measurement, I can't see how it would possible to find it. Aren't degrees Lintner or WK the only ways to express diastatic power? I would think that German maltsters would list it in degrees WK if they listed it at all.

I tried to figure this out myself about a month ago when I was thinking about making a dunkel and wanted to use only Munich malt. I dropped the idea because neither Best Malz nor Weyermann listed DP in any way I could determine.
 
There are tests you can do, but you need a lab and they're more effort than they're worth. I'd suggest just using the general values (eg. 300 for pale, 265 for crystal...) for convenience. :p
 
I was reading in Noonan that another indication of diastatic power (along with modification) is conversion time. It's not so exacting as far as quantification goes, but pilsener malt should convert within 15 min. and therefore has acceptable diastatic power.

As a side note, I also found friability interesting. (Friable means it can be easily reducable (crushed) and in malt, the percent friable is presumed to mean an estimate of the percent modified, the remaining percent unmodified.) Noonan states malt for [single] infusion mashing should be 85% friable. Any malt should be 80% friable.

My BestMalz Pilsener malt is 81.4% friable. All other parameters of this malt that relate to composing a mashing regime are favorable for single infusion, but this friability leads me to believe a Hochkurz mash schedule is probably a good thing.
 
What should be minimal acceptable value in WK degrees, to to ensure full conversion of a given grist?
 
Understanding Malt Analyses

Starch conversion: Diastatic power (°Lintner, IOB). Diastatic power (DP) expresses the strength of starch-reducing enzymes in the malt and is measured in °Lintner (sometimes referred to as IOB or .25 maltose equivalent). Diastatic power, considered together with mealiness/vitreosity (see below), indicates how well a malt will respond to mashing. The DP may be as low as 35-40 for a well-converted, low-protein British ale malt, about 100 for a European lager malt, and 125 or greater for high-protein American two-row malt. Six-row malts can have DPs as high as 160. The latter malts have more protein, and thus more enzymes to reduce far more than just their own starches, while the British malts have enough only to convert their own weight under normal infusion mash conditions.

European terminology. The EBC unit of measurement for diastatic power is °WK (Windisch-Kolbach units). The value of °WK can be converted to °Lintner by the formula DP °Lintner = (°WK + 16) / 3.5.
 
If its not listed you can’t calculate it ;)

Weyermann tends to show to what percentage it can be used in the grist. And the conversion times listed are the conversion times at the 70C (160F) rest in the congress mash.

BestMalz dark Munich will convert itself but it needs time and you have to choose a mash profile that aims for high fermentability to compensate for the low fermentability that you get with a standard mash. I have done that twice. It seems that BM dark Munich is a little stronger kilned than Weyermann’s Munch II.

I wouldn’t worry much about DP unless you want to push the boundaries: high adjunct percentage or all Munich malt.

Kai
 
Just a thought - could you get a semi-accurate number by doing a 'mini-mash' (ie 500g?) and replicating that same mini-mash with a known malt, and then compare the efficiency of both?
 
the efficency after a mini mash may not be sufficient since malt generally has enough enzymes to convert itself or more. This may lead to a saturation effect where two malts with different DP have similar efficiencies because they both converted all the starches. Better to use malt and gelatinized starch (e.g. Corn starch) and measure the gravity of the mash liquid after a fixed time. The higher it is the stronger the enzymatic power of the malt.

Kai
 
I would suggest that if anything less that a 20 degree Linter difference is important to you, you should be either using a different maltster, researching german language science or doing the wet chemistry yourself. If this great a difference is not important to you, follow the advice of our friend Charlie Papazian.
 
If this great a difference is not important to you, follow the advice of our friend Charlie Papazian.

We're not allowed to use that acronym in this forum. Here it's OADBHAHB... Obsess About Details Before Having A HomeBrew.:D
 
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