Mash Rest Temperatures

We all know that in mashing English malt and such, one does a single infusion mash somewhere b/t 149 deg-158 deg. But for lagers, and European beers, there are all sorts of rests, times, and different ways of doing it. Will anyone tell me a good resource to read, or just go ahead and explain it to me, why and when and what for on the use of different temperature infusions. I just need "122 deg does this, it is used with these beers, blah blah." I read a TON of books, and they ALL seem to stay away from just coming out with the facts on this subject.

Books Ive read: David Millers Basic Homebrewing
Designing Great Beers
Various Homebrew Publications on Specific Beer Types

Actually I think Palmer's online guide (or better yet buy the book) seems to do a fairly good job of explaining the temperatures and what they accomplish. Truth be told you could probably write a whole book on the effects of temperature alone. Most don't go into that much detail for a few reasons. Fully modified malts don't benefit really from these various rests and in some cases (from what I have read) suffer. Second off most brewers on the homebrew scale are not set up to do so nor need to do so because of reason 1. Many of the European malts from what I understand are similar. Some are kept undermodified to allow certain processes to remain that affect the product but I am not sure who does and where you can get them.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter14-1.html

That chart says a lot of what you are looking for.

I agree with the suggestion of Palmer's chapters on this. There's an excellent graph in there of what sorts of things happen at different rest temps.

Here was a pretty good recent thread on this topic.

Palmer's guide is great, and if you really want to get to the bottom of the discussion (at least to a level more than adequate for most homebrewers) get yourself a copy of New Lager Brewing by Noonan. Despite the title, it's actually applicable to ales, as well, and goes into great detail on what happens at different temperatures and why you might want to execute such a schedule.

We do have something on the Wiki about that. It might be full of typos and gramattical errors, but it may give you a different view than the other resources:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/The_Theory_of_Mashing

Kai

Thanks a lot guys, Ive gotten a lot of info out of these.

Does anyone do separate mashing--where you put the ingredients that need a lower temp rest in a separate pot before adding to a single larger mashing tun? This was the only way I could do it using a plastic cooler type of tun. Thoughts???

That question is like asking someone to tell what a wormhole looks like

Boring answer:

It all depends on what kind of malt you're dealing with, what kind of water etc. Decoction mashing, maltase steps where you add only half of your grains and then cool it down again and add the rest etc. There's a lot to learn on mashing.

My tip is to read up on different techniques/mash regimes on the style you will brew next. All at once will be too much if you really want to understand the because and why's. Brew some different styles, read up on the mashing before you brew them, and the knowledge will stick way better than if you try to absorb everyting at once, which I guess would be just scraping the surface of it.

It's a jungle out there