how mash parameters affect fermentability and efficiency

I finally completed, or called it complete, the series of experiments that had been working on for a while. The results are posted here on my wiki and also here as PDF.

In addition to that James interviewed me about that series of experiments for Basic Brewing Radio. The interview is this week's podcast I haven't listened to it yet, but James does a good job editing, so I trust him.

Check it out and let me know if you have questions on that subject that may be worth investigating.

Kai

Damn,you put some serious time in on those experiments!

A hearty thank you and appreciation for your efforts on this project.

Interesting to say the least.

Awesome Kaiser!!!

A+ work.

Thanks for this.

Oh man, great research. Thanks!

+10 (chars )!!

I've heard the james's interview this morning and red the pdf file...

i think it's great!

Thanks for the support.

BTW, I fixed the affects vs. effects misspelling. I also kept a copy of the PDF that still has a file name starting with Affect… to keep the links working that I sent out. Someone from the AHA techtalk pointed that out.

Kai

Got halfway through the podcast this morning and am VERY grateful you have the time, patience, and more importantly - the intelligence to piece together a pertinent and valid experiment such as this.

This kind of stuff is important for the brewing community, in order to keep from people perpetuating information they take as truth, when they've actually only heard it as third-hand info.

Prost!

This is some great information --still trying to digest it all!

I would be interested in knowing about the efficiency differences using different mash/sparge schedules. For instance, how does a 3 stepped mash with fly sparge compare to a single infusion batch.

lrr81765 said:

I would be interested in knowing about the efficiency differences using different mash/sparge schedules. For instance, how does a 3 stepped mash with fly sparge compare to a single infusion batch.

Click to expand...

Let me comment on that a little bit.

brewhouse efficiency is the product of conversion efficiency and lauter efficiency. If you convert more of the starches in the mash your efficiency will go up and also if your lauter gets more of the dissolved extract into the kettle your efficiency will also go up.

The nice/interesting thing is how these 2 efficiencies are affected. Conversion efficiency is only affected by mashing and my work shows how different mash parameters can affect it. If one mash schedule converts more starch than another one, the conversion efficiency will be better for the first mash and the brewhouse efficiency will be better as well if both mashes are lautered the same way.

Lauter efficiency is mainly independent of mashing (I say this b/c mash parameters can affect the run-off speed which can affect the lauter efficiency in fly sparging, but not so much in batch sparging) and depends on how you lauter.

As a result there is no need to compare a fly sparged step mash with a batch sparged single infusion. It is sufficient to evaluate the conversion efficiency of the step mash vs. the single infusion and the fly sparging lauter efficiency vs. the batch sparging lauter efficiency. knowing that brewhouse efficiency = conversion eff * lauter eff you can calculate the brewhouse efficiency of all 4 combinations.

Kai

Damn, that was textbook worthy material right there and we get it for free. I glanced over it for now, but I'll definately be printing it and adding it to my brew-binder.