Kill Mash Out but Raise Temperature to Improve Efficiency?

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Clint Yeastwood

Clint Yeastwood

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I'm reading about mashing out. A lot of people think it's a waste of time for homebrewers.

All my recipes have a 15-minute rest at 170 at the end. I can't find any information indicating whether I started this in 2023, when I returned to brewing, or I do it because I was doing it in 2007, when I quit.

Looks like some people think it increases efficiency simply because hot water does a better job of draining out of grain and taking sugar with it.

I'm thinking I should go from a 15-minute rest to heating to 170 and then turning off the machine immediately. I would get the benefit of hotter water, but I would save 15 minutes in a long brew day.

Thoughts?
 
I think the ramp up to mash-out bursts open grain granules that were otherwise going to hold onto their payload.

I do mash-outs for most recipes because I think it provides more consistent results when one is fly sparging that takes almost an hour to complete. I don't do it for my imperial stout because any help it can get wrt saccharification is a win :)

Cheers!
 
The Braumeister has spoiled me. Put in the water. Push a button. Listen for the beep. Put in the grain. Push the button. Add hops when it beeps again. I barely remember what sparging is. Brewing has become very simple.

It's amazing how different everyone's methods are these days.
 
It would be something to see everyone here brewing in a big convention center, all at once, using the equipment they all use at home. Kettles, Braumeisters, Clawhammer systems, Spike systems, BIAB, crazy HERMS systems...

All to get the same result.

Somehow we manage to exchange information that helps all of us.
 
For a fly sparge, definitely. You have to lock in the fermentabilty profile. For a full volume BIAB, nah. The wort will be at 170+ soon enough.

I'm pretty sure I've seen science-y folk explain no significant difference in wort viscocity or benefit to lauter efficiency between 155 and 170.

Surely braukaiser has data on this?
 
If you are going to boil the wort in a few minutes anyway, then just finish the mash and do that. The 170 F temperature mashout ONLY makes sense if you plan on leaving your wort sitting for several hours before you get around to boiling it. Otherwise it's a pointless step.
 
The mashout efficiency bump is more to do with faster chemical reactions at a time when denaturing the enzymes is a foregone conclusion. It's worth a few gravity points. I used to only do it if I noticed my mash gravity to be a little lower than expected but I now ramp up to 160 about 10 minutes prior to my normal rest length because I can, and it gets me as much efficiency as a no sparge is going to get me.
 
The "hotter = thinner = better extract" was binned to mythology eons ago.
Meanwhile, consider a 60 minute mash extended to 120 minutes due to an hour worth of lautering at saccharification temperature...

Cheers!
 
Wait...what?

Lautering? I mean, all I do is...well, I should explain it.

The Braumeister has a tube that holds all the grain during mashing. It does what a BIAB bag does. It has mesh barriers at the bottom and top, so wort can go through the pipe, but grain is stuck in it. It's like a giant teabag.

The bottom of the tube seals against the bottom of the kettle. The Braumeister has a pump that shoots wort up through the wort. The wort that has been pushed up through the grain flows over the top of the tube and back into the area where the pump intake is. So the machine constantly pushes wort through the grain.

That's about all it can do. When the process is finished, you lift the tube containing the grain up and rest it on the top of the machine, and it sits for 20 minutes while gravity makes the wort drain back into the kettle. Then you get rid of the tube and start boiling.

I don't really think in terms of lautering and sparging these days. I justprogram the machine and push buttons. It sounds like you're saying a longer mash will get more sugar out of the grain because the water has more time to wash it out and maybe to get the enzymes and the starches together.
 
Back when I did honest work instead of pushing buttons, I thought of that as sparging. I used to have to dump my mashed grain into an Igloo cooler with a false bottom and pour pitchers of hot water over it as wort drained into the boil kettle.

I thought lautering was about moving water through grain during mashing.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
It sounds like you're saying a longer mash will get more sugar out of the grain because the water has more time to wash it out and maybe to get the enzymes and the starches together.
Click to expand...

Once you've hit 100% conversion (starch to sugar) you don't get more sugars, but the sugars you have get shorter and more simple. Attenuation increases, beer becomes drier, etc.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
It sounds like you're saying a longer mash will get more sugar out of the grain because the water has more time to wash it out and maybe to get the enzymes and the starches together.
Click to expand...

No, if anything I'm stating that essentially doubling the saccharification time will inevitably increase conversion towards more fermentable wort. That could be good or bad, but generally one wants to consider it in advance and make it part of a repeatable process, so the end results are consistent from batch to batch...

Cheers!
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
Back when I did honest work instead of pushing buttons, I thought of that as sparging. I used to have to dump my mashed grain into an Igloo cooler with a false bottom and pour pitchers of hot water over it as wort drained into the boil kettle.

I thought lautering was about moving water through grain during mashing.
Click to expand...

Lauter. Remove wort from grain.

Sparge. Add and remove fresh water

Recirculate. Pass wort in a circuitous manner through grain.
 
day_trippr said:
No, if anything I'm stating that essentially doubling the saccharification time will inevitably increase conversion towards more fermentable wort. That could be good or bad, but generally one wants to consider it in advance and make it part of a repeatable process, so the end results are consistent from batch to batch...

Cheers!
Click to expand...
It kind of sounds like that would work against what I'm trying to do by using crystal malt. I don't like beer that tastes like malta, but I do like a touch of sweetness to balance hops.
 
Sparging - whether batch or fly - is indeed executed to extract more "mash product" than simply draining the first runnings alone.
I suspect that line was over-simplified by a tad ;)

Cheers!
 
Lauter high gravity first runnings. Fresh water in... lauter lower gravity wort out. Properly done, you can get ~8% higher mash efficiency than a full volume mash.
 
So if attenuation from longer mashing doesn't kill the sugar I get from crystal malt, it must kill other hard-to-ferment sugars from the rest of the grain and turn them into alcohol.

In any case, it sounds like it's not compatible with the results I like. I use crystal to prevent dryness from getting out of hand and prevent dryness that goes beyond what I like. A long mash that makes beer less sweet would seem to work against that.
 
I think day_trippr was merely suggesting a thought experiment as to why a mash out is needed for a long duration fly sparge. With BIAB, there's no need for a mashout since you get to denaturing temps so quickly. No suggestion for you to double your mash duration.
 
I don't even know if what I used to do was batch or fly. It has been so long. I dumped everything into the Igloo and then started pouring water in. I probably did not wait for the Igloo to drain before adding water, but maybe I did.

Sounds like doing away with the 15-minute rest at 170 is a good idea.
 
Most folks use the batch sparge technique where one pours a prescribed volume of hot water over the mash and collect the runnings in the kettle. One or two cycles may be done dependent on desired pre-boil volume vs what was provided by first runnings (and thus how much pre-boil volume can be filled via sparging)...

Cheers!
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
So if attenuation from longer mashing doesn't kill the sugar I get from crystal malt, it must kill other hard-to-ferment sugars from the rest of the grain and turn them into alcohol.

In any case, it sounds like it's not compatible with the results I like. I use crystal to prevent dryness from getting out of hand and prevent dryness that goes beyond what I like. A long mash that makes beer less sweet would seem to work against that.
Click to expand...
The longer dextrins are much less sweet then mono- and disaccharides. Their primary effect on beer is that with less fermentability there’s less ethanol. Mouthfeel is probably second, and only then sweetness. In my experience there’s a huge dependence of fermentability on mash conditions, but especially in light of this, the effect on the sensory profile of the beer is surprisingly subtle.

I’ve been told that crystal malts add sweetness not from sugars but instead from Maillard products, so the sweetness will be there no matter how you mash and ferment.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
It would be something to see everyone here brewing in a big convention center, all at once, using the equipment they all use at home. Kettles, Braumeisters, Clawhammer systems, Spike systems, BIAB, crazy HERMS systems...
Click to expand...
Need to do this outside; the smoke from my woodstove would have everyone running for the exits!

1700138571453.png
 
day_trippr said:
Not really - crystal malts aren't going to suddenly become more fermentable with time in the mash - their dextrin content is pretty much set...

Cheers!
Click to expand...
I'm dubious in the case of a 142-148F long rest which is where limit-dextrinase does its thing. I guess there's a question of when one might do that or why, but I think people that are using non-heatable mash tuns like Igloo coolers and really miss their desired rest temp of 152F might spend a while in that zone and it would be breaking the crystal malt dextrines up. Perhaps it's an argument for adding these malts late in the mash if you have trouble hitting temps or if you're doing an overnight mash (and still want dextrines).
 
I brew with BIAB without sparge and tried mash-out several times without any (measurable and visible) difference compared to brew without mash-out. I read that mash-out only makes sense with All-grain when the sparge lasts a long time to stop the enzymatic action.
 
Studying up on crystal malt. I use a lot of it, and people have scratched their heads and said I was using way too much. The beer is fine, however. I may know what the explanation is now.

I have tried to find sources other than forum posts. No offense. Maltsters and so on. One source says dark crystal malts are a lot sweeter than light malts. I have never used anything but 10L, so maybe that's why I'm not getting overpowering sweetness. I just wanted something to make beer sweeter to balance heavy hopping, without adding a lot of color or other flavors, and it has worked out for me. I tend to use a lot of hops, perhaps because I learned to brew back in the days when everything was hopped to death. I thought SNPA was unbalanced, so when I made my first IPA, I put crystal in it.

I am also reading that the reason dark crystal malts are sweeter is that the sweetness comes from caramel, which is burnt sugar. Burnt, but still sugar, and sugar is sweet. At least the ones that make crystal sweet are.

Caramelized sugar in crystal malt doesn't ferment well because the molecules from the roasting are big, but it's definitely sweet, and it carries a caramel flavor. This seems to answer a question I had a while back about adding plain old burnt sugar to beer recipes to get a caramel taste. It should work to provide the caramel flavor, assuming burned sucrose is also unfermentable, but it looks like it would also add sweetness, just like crystal. I don't think the sweetness would ferment out, because it comes from unfermentable sugars. I guess dark crystal malt is easier.

I also looked up the solubility of sugar in hot water. I had to go with sucrose because I'm not spending the day trying to find a chart for beer sugars. I would guess the principle is the same. Sucrose is considerably more soluble in 170-degree water than 155-degree water. Looks like you can get around 10 more gravity points for sucrose at saturation, which is worth something. Would it be helpful below the saturation threshold? I guess it could. People complain about efficiency with the Braumeister, but I keep hitting my OG with recipes I used to use in a kettle. I wonder if mashing out has helped.

I don't think viscosity is the whole picture. I don't know why people looked at viscosity instead of solubility, but I guess there is a reason. Wort seems pretty thin already at 155.

Seems like there are never any solid answers, but I am digging.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
I also looked up the solubility of sugar in hot water. I had to go with sucrose because I'm not spending the day trying to find a chart for beer sugars. I would guess the principle is the same. Sucrose is considerably more soluble in 170-degree water than 155-degree water. Looks like you can get around 10 more gravity points for sucrose at saturation, which is worth something. Would it be helpful below the saturation threshold? I guess it could. People complain about efficiency with the Braumeister, but I keep hitting my OG with recipes I used to use in a kettle. I wonder if mashing out has helped.

I don't think viscosity is the whole picture. I don't know why people looked at viscosity instead of solubility, but I guess there is a reason. Wort seems pretty thin already at 155.
Click to expand...
People don't look at solubility because it plays no role in mashing. The solubility limit of maltose at 151°F (~66°C) is 66.7% by weight (66.7°Plato), which corresponds to an SG of 1.329. If you could mash at 0.75 qt/lb (I doubt you could stir this) the max wort concentration you could get is 32.8 wt% (32.8°Plato), or 1.143 SG, which is less than one half of the solubility limit.

The fact that sugar (and most other things) dissolve faster in hotter vs. cooler water also plays no role in mashing. Hydrolysis (the chemical reaction, catalyzed by amylase enzymes, that chops starch up into sugar molecules) creates sugar molecules that are already in solution. There is never any solid sugar to be dissolved in a mash. And since you are well below the solubility limit, no solid sugar will precipitate out of the wort.

Viscosity is looked at since it will affect the rate of wort draining (viscosity is often measured by draining rate), and probably the amount of wort retained in the grain (lower viscosity wort should drain more completely.) The viscosity change of pure sugar solutions going from mash temp to mash-out temp is about a 15% reduction. I have not seen any experimental data on grain absorption rates vs. lautering temp, so the size of any effect is unknown. I can say with confidence that any viscosity effect would be smaller when sparging vs. a no-sparge lauter.

Brew on :mug:
 
A lot of the sugar is inside grain husks, so how can it be that it doesn't need to be rinsed out of there? Grain from a sparged mash is still sweet, so there is still sugar in it when the process is finished. Surely some of that sugar can be extracted some way.

It's hard for me to believe viscosity is a big deal here, since wort is so runny at 155. I used to teach college kids how to use a Lorenz viscometer. I don't know if it's fair to compare grain to a skinny glass funnel, but with a viscometer, the speed is what you look at. Thick liquids and thick ones eventually pass through. It's just the time that varies, unless you have something really thick that coats the instrument and won't move. Can it really be that you lose anything significant by dropping from 170 to 155?
 
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Clint Yeastwood said:
Did it have any effect you could measure?
Click to expand...
No, but with small kids my timing is all over the place, so I don't consider my process particularly dialed in. There's a lot of noise.

But with a pretty coarse crush and well modified base malt I get >80% efficiency without much fuss, so it's definitely not hurting much.
 
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I am thinking about the way the Braumeister works. It keeps pumping wort through the mash, so it's different from sparging with a pitcher or bucket and plain water. The pump will keep running all the way to 190 degrees, so it's running during a 170-degree mashout. Running 170-degree wort through grain continuously for 15 minutes must give it a pretty thorough rinse, but because it's wort, not water, it has to leave a lot of sugar in the grain. You can't rinse wort out with wort. All you can do is make sure you've mixed everything up well. So if I really cared about peak efficiency, I would have to pour some clean water over the grain at the end.

I feel like I should keep doing the mashout just to make sure I give the system a chance to do a good extraction, but I am not inclined to fool around with extra water, since things are working fine as they are. I don't think I need to think about denaturing the enzymes, since no one else seems to see any benefit in it.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
I am thinking about the way the Braumeister works. It keeps pumping wort through the mash, so it's different from sparging with a pitcher or bucket and plain water. The pump will keep running all the way to 190 degrees, so it's running during a 170-degree mashout. Running 170-degree wort through grain continuously for 15 minutes must give it a pretty thorough rinse, but because it's wort, not water, it has to leave a lot of sugar in the grain. You can't rinse wort out with wort. All you can do is make sure you've mixed everything up well. So if I really cared about peak efficiency, I would have to pour some clean water over the grain at the end.

I feel like I should keep doing the mashout just to make sure I give the system a chance to do a good extraction, but I am not inclined to fool around with extra water, since things are working fine as they are. I don't think I need to think about denaturing the enzymes, since no one else seems to see any benefit in it.
Click to expand...
sounds like you are leaving some sugars behind but not a big deal in small batches. I batch sparge in a three keggle setup (10 gallon finished batches) as a little more malt to make up some gravity versus time fly sparging is worth it to me. i recirculate the mash for the entire process, first runnings are very high gravity, after batch sparging (fresh water to bring me to boil volume) of course gravity less. after everything is in the boil kettle i may run extra water through the mash and collect some very light wort and collect in jugs to be used at a later date for yeast starters, i do have to add a little dry malt extract to bring it up gravity but then i am saving on extract.
 
Clint Yeastwood said:
A lot of the sugar is inside grain husks, so how can it be that it doesn't need to be rinsed out of there?
Click to expand...
Neither the starch nor the sugar is in the husks. The husks are a protective covering for the endosperm, which makes up most of the mass of the kernels. The starch is in the endosperm. In order to convert the starch to sugar, it must first be gelatinized, so that there is water surrounding the starch chains (this is what happens when you cook rice, for example.) The starch needs to be gelatinized first because the reaction that breaks a starch chain bond also consumes a water molecule. Each bond broken eliminates one water molecule. Thus you need a water molecule basically in contact with the bond in the starch chain. If the starch is not gelatinized, you do not have that pre-condition met.

At the end of the mash, you basically have cellulose particles of various shapes swimming in wort. There should be no starch left. The wort is a solution of mostly sugar, with some proteins and other minor components. There is no solid sugar. When you drain the wort, you are left with a thin coating of wort on all of the particles. If you sparge, you dilute the wort coating the cellulose particles, and most of the diluted wort drains away, with it's sugar. What's left coating the particles after a sparge is much diluted wort.

Brew on :mug:
 

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