Brewing a Dry Beer

[moon_street]

Curious about opinions regarding brewing tasty dry beers.
I've tried lots of strategies over the last 1 1/2 years.

1. Adding sugar as part of the grist (careful going over 10%)
2. Mashing at lower temps
3. Step mashing (~136F, ~147F)
4. Mashing for longer time (2 hours or so)

While all of these help. I've found that number 4 above makes the most difference.
And that number 1 can be dangerous if overdone. It will produce dry beer for sure. But while sacrificing body (which is quite important to tasty beer)
What I've settled on is a combination of 1, 3 and 4. And it produces consistently tasty dry beers.
On the flipside, it's possible to brew overly dry beer. And you end up with "bitter hop water".
This may seem obvious to long time brewers, but to a newbie it was hard won.

 

[Immocles]

Low and slow on the mash. I won't mash as long as two hours, but if I want to push the FG down a few points, I'll add a good half hour to my normal mash time and make sure my mash starts at about 148. By the time I am ready to boil, the mash temp would have gotten as low as 144, which is juuuust a little cool, but it makes for a highly fermentable wort.

 

[NSMikeD]

keep in mind water chemistry affects the pH and will impact the enzymatic reactions that result in unfermentable sugars as well as mouthfeel (guiness is a dry beer but the hard water results in a creamy mouthfeel which we perceive as sweet).

 

[mac_1103]

How dry?

 

[day_trippr]

 

[Sammy86]

I'm a big fan of the Hochkurz Mash steps:

142° for 30-45 minutes
158° for 30-45 minutes

Mashout if you want but I stopped doing mashouts years ago.

Using these methods my last three beers have dropped single digits!

Alot depends on your yeast as well...pitching a good healthy amount plus the fermentability of your wort will help keep your brews nice and dry!

 

[day_trippr]

If one really wants a parched beer that's as good a reason as any to skip a mash-out

Cheers!

 

[hottpeper13]

I incorporate the step mash and sugar additions as one by doing a cereal mash with either corn grits or rice. while the cereal mash is boiling the main mash sits at 143* for 30-40 min. , when mixed the mash gose to 160*. These are lagers and I've used 34/70, 833, S-189 and more, my last ones finished at 1.006 and 1.008.

 

[Group W]

Curious about opinions regarding brewing tasty dry beers.
I've tried lots of strategies over the last 1 1/2 years.

1. Adding sugar as part of the grist (careful going over 10%)
2. Mashing at lower temps
3. Step mashing (~136F, ~147F)
4. Mashing for longer time (2 hours or so)

While all of these help. I've found that number 4 above makes the most difference.
And that number 1 can be dangerous if overdone. It will produce dry beer for sure. But while sacrificing body (which is quite important to tasty beer)
What I've settled on is a combination of 1, 3 and 4. And it produces consistently tasty dry beers.
On the flipside, it's possible to brew overly dry beer. And you end up with "bitter hop water".
This may seem obvious to long time brewers, but to a newbie it was hard won.

All good points here. I use most except adding sugar, but would do that on a higher FG beer.

What OG and FG are you targeting? What type of beers?

 

[ebbelwoi]

The Japanese macro adjunct lagers (Asahi Super Dry, Kirin Lager, Sapporo Black Label) all list "starch" among their ingredients. I'm guessing it's something unfermentable, like maltodextrin. Anybody know?

 

[dmtaylor]

The Japanese macro adjunct lagers (Asahi Super Dry, Kirin Lager, Sapporo Black Label) all list "starch" among their ingredients. I'm guessing it's something unfermentable, like maltodextrin. Anybody know?

I would guess they’re using actual rice starch, probably in powdered form. It would be used in the mash, and thus the enzymes from the malt in the rest of the grist would easily convert it into fermentable sugars.

 

[Group W]

Agree on the starch. Similar to the use of flake corn or rice which can dry a beer. Another thing is the use of a high DP base malt combined with minimizing speciality malts and Crystal malts. Convert all the proteins and leave little nonfermentable sugars.

 

[ebbelwoi]

Apparently, it's cornstarch (browser translation required):

https://www.asahibeer.co.jp/customer/post-215.html

 

[OleBrewing]

In my 60% wheat beer nontraditional. I start mash low at 145/148 then bring it up to 158 near the end of 60 minutes. This creates a very nice crisp beer with enough backbone for an ale. An average beer drinker wouldn't know that it is mostly a wheat beer. Keep in mind this is only wheat and two row nothing else one hop addition at 30mins in the boil of 60.