Vocabulary Question; "Doughing In"...

[Broken Crow]

I can't think of a good April Fool's day thing, so I'll go with a silly question that I'd actually like opinions on:
If you underlet, do you still call it 'Doughing In'?

 

[day_trippr]

I have been underletting the strike for years and nowadays use that term in place of "doughing in"...

Cheers!

 

[sibelman]

Mashing in, maybe? I don't really call it anything, I just do it. Dough seems odd, irrespective how the water and grist combines. More like gruel than dough.

 

[mac_1103]

I think I read somewhere that brewers actually did start the mash by making a dough of sorts back in the day. The day being some time before 1500 AD.

 

[day_trippr]

I've read that the origins of "beer" started with "bread" as the grist...

Cheers!

 

[sibelman]

... and then there's kvass, speaking of bread and beer making.

 

[Stikius]

... and then there's kvass, speaking of bread and beer making.

I was thinking of keptinis. More or less the Sam geographical area though

 

[MicroMickey]

Doughing-in is an old traditional mash step but the term is normally misused today. With under-modified malts and decoction mashing, it really was a big deal. The original dough-in was just that – a minimal amount of water was added to the grist and it was kneaded like bread dough. Many references call for using ambient temperature water but other references state “warm” water. The dough-in phase could last for hours and allowed the grist to hydrate long before the alpha and beta amylases got to work. Today, the mash-in is done at almost any starting temperature and allows the grist to hydrate with or without amylase activity.

 

[kevin58]

When it comes to the use of brewing terms from long ago my first stop for answers is Ron Pattinson's blog, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. Ron is a beer historian who uses brewery log books among other period documents in his research. I went to his blog and searched "dough-in" and found these... although he doesn't go into detail about the actual process of doughing-in there are clues in his mash step layout.


In a recipe Ron posted for a beer brewed in 1942 by Barclay Perkins that the brewery called "XLK" is listed the following:
Processes

Advanced Mash – Pretty much the same mash as the KK from last week (2011-03-02 – 1942 Barclay Perkins KK). Dough-in, underlet infusion and then a sparge (165F/74C) that was usually quite long. The simple infusion produced an identical beer to this advanced mash in this instance. As always, you are left up to find the hot liquor temperature needed on your system to achieve the temperatures below.

Mash​	ºF​	ºC​	Time​
Dough in​	147​	64​	30​
Underlet​	152​	67​	90​

A second recipe for another Barclay Perkins beer from 1928 identified in the brewery log as BBS Ex (Double Brown Stout) lists a similar step:
Processes
Advanced Mash – Similar for most of the bigger beers this one had a two step mash followed by an extended sparge. A simple dough-in with a short rest and then an underlet to the final temp. The mash temps are pretty high for this beer which can go a long way to explaining the high finishing gravity here.

Mash​	ºF​	ºC​	Time​
Dough in​	153​	67​	30​
Underlet​	158​	70​	90​

And yet a third Barclay Perkins recipe, this one from 1930 and the London brewery's foray into brewing lagers come this Dark Lager mash schedule:

Mashing: Now she starts getting a bit weird (vol/temp depend on your system).
Dough-in: Only the base malt is use.
Rest 1: 120F (49C) x 40min
Rest 2: Boiling liquor is added, as well as steam, to bring it up to 147F (64C). The crystal malt and roast malt is then added.
Rest 3: As soon as Rest 2 is mixed in, hot liquor is added to bring up to about 157F (69C). Rest 10 min.
Rest 4: Boiling liquor is added to bring to 168F (78C). Rest for 30 min.

Summary: Rest 1 (40min), Rest 2 (2 min), Rest 3 (10 min), Rest 4 (30min).
As you can see this is a really weird way to go about things. A normalish protein rest using only the base malt, then adding hot liquor to bring you up close to sack rest and loosen the mash to mix in your crystal/roast and then enough hot liquor to bring you up to a higher sacc rest. That rest is pretty short seeing that the mash was infused to sacc rest rather than steam heated and a pretty extended very high sacc rest. Then sparge away at 170.

 

[kevin58]

Ron Pattinson search results continued:

To keep the above reply from getting too long there was more I found by only searching for the word "dough". First up came this excerpt from a 1914 publication called "Die Bierbrauerei" (by M. Krandauer). The section quoted is about the mashing schedule for Kulmbacher Bier in particular:

"The mashing scheme has no peculiatities which will influence the above mentioned characteristics of the beer. The malt is mixed into dough with water at 50º, - then as much simmering water is added as is necessary to leave the temperature at around 54º after mashing; then a wort is run off and brought to the boil in the kettle and immediately added back to the little remainder than is left in the mashtun, whereby the temperature after continued mashing is raised to as much as 70º and the mash is left to form sugar."


Next comes a mash schedule for a much older recipe; an 1879 Kulmbacher Export:
The Kulmbach method of decoction

This is the description of the Kulmbach method of decoction from Otto ("Handbuch der Chemischen Technologie: Die Bierbrauerei" by Dr. Fr. Jul. Otto, published in 1865, page 128).

As soon as the water in the kettle reaches 50º C, as much as is needed is put into the mash tun to dough in.

After an hour, when the rest of the water has come to the boil in the kettle, this is added to the mash. The temperature of the mash should be 53.75 - 56.25º C. A small amount of water should remain in the kettle so that the temperature of the mash is correct. Or a small amount of cold water is added to the mash. When, after resting, the wort in the mash tun has cleared, this is run off and boiled in the kettle. After just a few minutes boiling, this Lauter mash is added back to the tun and mashed for 45 minutes. The temperature of the mash should be 71.25 - 72.5º C.

Usually a small quantity of wort is left in the kettle and boiled with all the hops for 10 to 12 minutes (hopfenrösten).

The mash in the tun is left to rest for 90 minutes, then it is drawn off and added to the kettle where it interrupts the rösten.

The wort from the first lot of cold water poured over the grains is usually used for topping up the kettle.

Another excerpt from the same publication listed above; "Handbuch der Chemischen Technologie: Die Bierbrauerei" by Dr. Fr. Jul. Otto, published in 1865, pages 120 to 122. This is from another German recipe; an 1896 Munich Lagerbier:

For 100 pounds of malt, 800 pounds of water are used. [Not sure what sort of pounds. I would assume around 1 pound = 0.5 kg.]

Half to two-thirds of the water is cold and used to dough in. The rest is brought to the boil in the kettle. After doughing in, the mash is left to rest for 3 or 4 hours. If warm water is used for doughing in, the mash should not be left to rest.

When the water has boiled it is added to the mash. The temperature should rise to 30-37.5º C.

When this temperature has been reached, about a third of the thicker part of the mash is transferred to the kettle and boiled for 30 minutes. (Boiling the first thick mash.)

The thick mash is returned to the mash tun and mashed for 15 minutes, so that the thinner and thicker parts completely separate. The temperature should now be 45-50º C.

As soon as this is finished a third of the mash, again the thicker part, is transferred to the kettle and boiled for 30 minutes. (Second thick mash.)

The second thick mash is returned to the mash tun and mashed. The temperature should now be 60-62.5º C.

Now a portion of the thin mash is transferred to the kettle (enough to raise the temperature of the mash to 75º C when returned to the mash tun) and boiled for 15 minutes. (Lauter mash.)

The Lauter mash is returned to the mash tun and there's another round of mashing. The temperature should now be 75º C. The mash is left to rest for 90 minutes.

After the wort has been drawn off, more water is brought to the boil (30 - 60 pounds for 100 pounds of grain) and poured over the grains. The resulting wort is either added to the main wort or used to make Nachbier (Small Beer), which in Munich is called Scheps.

There are other similar search results but there is enough here to piece together a basic understanding.

 

[MicroMickey]

Many old German brewing texts say something quite different. The use of the term "dough in" in 1920's, '30's, and '40's may have been misapplied.

 

[sibelman]

It's hard to convince oneself one's beer is historically accurate if the historical record is poor.

For me, a couple of history-based efforts have led to the conclusion that I want to make beer I want to drink, not beer that somewhat resembles something from the past. I have better results approximating (not quite cloning) beers I enjoy.

That said, words can be fun. Dough-in, mash-in, underlet: whatever! Let's get our grains hot and wet!

 

[MicroMickey]

Here are some old references – You decide.

The American Handybook of Brewing 1902
THE DECOCTION OR THICK MASH METHOD
“The initial or doughing-in temperature is about 28° to 30° R. (95° to I00° F). If hot water is run in, it should be done slowly and while keeping the mashing machine moving, so that this proceeding will take 15 to 20 minutes.”

The Journal of the Institute of Brewing 1910
Lager Beer. Part II.—Brewing Processes.
by C. Rühl
“I will describe first one of the oldest brewing processes known. This process was practised from olden times and was the old empirical method used by our forefathers, especially in Bavaria. It has retained its position up to the present day. About ten years ago it was largely abandoned (though in Bavaria it has never lost its good repute), but in recent times it has regained its good name, and even where it had been discredited to some extent. We have inherited this process as I said from our forefathers, whose scientific knowledge was very limited. It is, therefore, somewhat astonishing, that it, as a fact, embraces nearly all those points which our modern scientific brewers find to be of so much importance: the cold digestion and the peptonisation. It is the old Bavarian-Dick-Maisch process to which I refer. Those gentlemen who do not know the process already will find, when I describe it, that the malt is submitted to all those temperatures thought to be necessary in order to obtain an extract of such composition as the lager beer brewer desires for the special character of beer he intended to produce. The wort contains a certain amount of dextrins, malto-dextrin, or the mixture of maltose and a malto-dextrin, which the Bavarian brewer aims at producing because it is not so easily fermented by yeast. The process starts with cold digestion, stops just before reaching the lactic acid temperatures, and passes rapidly over the latter. The mash is stood for some time at those temperatures at which peptonisation occurs, and is then brought up to the saccharification temperature. “



“The time necessary for cold digestion depends upon the quality of the malt, and is sometimes considerably extended. An old Bavarian brewing process, the cold-set process, took 12 hours for this purpose. In the ordinary way 20—60 minutes will suffice; after that time the temperature of the whole goods is raised and brought to 95° F. by slowly pumping into it about 75 litres of boiling water per hundredweight of malt, whilst the mashing machinery is set in motion. When a temperature of 95° F. is reached, the machinery is stopped for a short time, and then put to slow movement in order to remove a portion of thick mash from the bottom of the tun into the mash copper. This thick or first Dickmaische will consist of about 100 litres (22 gallons) per hundredweight of malt, and it is essential that it is drawn as thick as possible.”

 

[Broken Crow]

It was just meant as a flighty semi-serious curiousity, but Thanks Everyone for turning it into something educational and useful!
I love learning the history and evolution of brewing and this is kinda like one of those Saturday morning things:
"You are a LoDO brewer, because you think of 'Doughing In' as what Other homebrewers do, and not just homebrewers."
Seriously though; Thanks!