Step mashing from high temps to low

[Terence]

When doing a step mash to get the amylase enzymes to work correctly and the acid rest and the protein rest correctly should the mash be started at the higher temps for Alpha amylase as a start, the Beta amylase, the glucanase and the proteolytic stage down the temperature scale.
My beers come out very nice without doing any step mash but I'm curios if this would help with a corn mash for whiskey

 

[Dcpcooks]

Doubt that works well. The enzymes denature once their particular temp range is exceeded. So you'll be denaturing the enzymes your trying to activate by starting high and going low.

 

[Terence]

So the only way to make the enzymes work is to go from low temps first and up?
Cheers mate, appreciated

 

[Addiktion]

I use beer smith it always starts with low to high. Low to High is what I do.

 

[day_trippr]

I think it was my first read of Papazian - or maybe it was Miller - that introduced the seemingly rational thought that optimizing the temperature for Alpha first and then dropping down to Beta's wheelhouse made more sense than the converse process, before explaining that Beta would be nearly dead by the time Alpha was finished

Cheers!

 

[Terence]

OK, denature means destroy character and properties so the only way to optimize is to do all rests at lower temps all the way up.... if I wanted to step mash.

 

[govner1]

When doing a step mash to get the amylase enzymes to work correctly and the acid rest and the protein rest correctly should the mash be started at the higher temps for Alpha amylase as a start, the Beta amylase, the glucanase and the proteolytic stage down the temperature scale.

My beers come out very nice without doing any step mash but I'm curios if this would help with a corn mash for whiskey

Step mashing starts at the lower temps & increases over the mash process. Starting at the higher end ( as others have noted will defeat the purpose of the step mash, i.e., getting the most out of Your enzymatic activity.

 

[Dcpcooks]

OK, denature means destroy character and properties so the only way to optimize is to do all rests at lower temps all the way up.... if I wanted to step mash.

Yeah that's true as far as a step mash is concerned. You can think of mash temps like ingredients, you can target temps for different properties in the finished beer. Malty, dry, clove are easily hit by matching a yeast to a mash profile so you have a lot of latitude to play.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Archaic brewing (looking at recipes from the 1800s and earlier) often had inverse step mashing as you're describing. However, just because that's how it used to be done doesn't that's how it should be done now that we better understand the science behind it.

In theory, mashing hotter first and then cooling down would allow alpha to chop up large starches, and then beta could chop them further into highly fermentable dissacharides. However there's that denaturing problem. That said, I've had beers made by those old methods (by folks interested in historical brewing), but can't say if it did anything more than a simple single infusion at the original temp would be.

Given how most homebrewers mash (adding grains to overheated water), one could make the claim that much of the grain bed is at or likely well above denaturing temp during that initial stabilization to mash temperature, and are effectively doing this anyway. Alpha also works very, very quickly, and few mashes will fail an iodine test past the first few minutes, ie available starches are converted albeit not necessarily to a fermentable form yet. Wonder if mashing in in the upper 150s, and as soon as the temp stabilizes chilling it down to the mid upper 140s wouldn't preserve enough beta activity, and produce an especially fermentable wort by allowing alpha to do the heavy lifting first. Or, it alternatively the beta and then slows down the alpha and leaves a ridiculously unfermentable mess with poor conversion efficiency.