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It's also good to get your grist up to 170 to help dissolve the sugar that you've produced. I favor that aspect over denaturing the enzymes. But decoctions are good for their flavor and efficiency aspect. If you have the time, go for it! I'm going to be doing them (at least for mashout) much...

I'm not saying that this wouldn't be a great book to have in my brewing library, but this book is based on brewing with extracts, rather than with grain, so I'm not sure how applicable it would be. Plus, the reviews are very, very mixed. I'm sure it's worth checking out, though.

Efficiency comes from the percentage of sugars that you pull out of the grains. It doesn't matter if they are fermentable, or if they are dextrins. Yes. The sugars dissolve more readily in warmer water, so you leave less behind. Be sure to adjust your pH in order to keep from pulling out...

Your efficiency will be greater with a longer, slower sparge in the upper 160s. But your mash should be dictated by the style of beer that you want to brew, not efficiency concerns. If you know your usual efficiency, you can plan your recipes with that figure and get the starting gravity that...

Yeah! Maris Otter is my favorite. I was thinking of using that as my base malt with a bit of amber malt for color and flavor and such. I might just use English 2-row as the base.

Sounds good! I've heard of using the more bitter hops continuously in the earlier part of the boil, then continue with the flavor/aroma hops continuously from the 35 minute point onward, and I've also heard of mixing all of the hops together and dividing them out into small doses throughout the...

That's fine, but it's only a matter of time before someone comes up with a decent clone of any brew and makes it available for anyone. The simple fact is that, as a homebrewer, I'm not going to be able to produce something exactly like any of my favorite beers. I'll still buy beer that I like...

I didn't argue with anybody, and I didn't actually get to talk to a brewer. The guy that I talked to was just someone at the brewery who was answering the phones and confirmed that he wasn't a brewer. I just listened to him, and then posted here to share my opinions. I just wanted to discuss...

Hey All, I'm working up a recipe that clones or at least approximates DFH 90 Minute IPA. I have read a couple of recipes online, and took into consideration the types of hops that they say they use (on the six-pack container). So I've been calling them, trying to talk to brewers, but it's...

Congratulations. "Not bad" is certainly not a disaster for your first all-grain beer. And, since it is a bit "green" at the moment, it might end up mellowing out into a really fine brewski. So, congratulations on a fine start!

I have been doing single infusions for my batches, but I did a thick decoction at the end of my last mash, which was for a roggenbier. That beer is so flavorful that I am interested in doing the same decoction at the end of some of my next several mashes in order to see how it affects other...

There are so many little details! Make sure that you hit your target temperatures for mashing, and make sure you know what temperatures you want for the desired result. Be sure your water is good, since your water makes up the vast majority of your beer. This includes mineral composition and...

It's not necessarily the ph of the water that you're worried about. Sure, it'd be good to start with a neutral ph, but the important thing is the softness of your water. Your grains will adjust the ph of your water to the correct range for mashing if it's soft enough. To have some peace of...

I just put this rye beer on tap tonight a few hours ago. it's now fairly chilled and beginning to carbonate and wow, I have to say that it's really, really good. I've never done a rye beer before and I have only done a decoction once (about eight or ten years ago) so I don't know what went...

Good question! I just added all of my grains at dough-in and let the mash rest at 151 or 152 for ninety minutes. Near the end of the mash, I pulled off about a gallon and a half for a thick decoction, and returned it to mash tun for mashout. I used 2 packs of nottingham yeast in my 5 gallon...

For your space constraints, I think someone else here had the best idea. Get a 5 gallon paint bucket and fill it mostly with ice, along with enough water cover the ice. Get some kind of immersible pump (like an aquarium pump) that you can attach to one of the tubes on your immersion chiller...

Yeah, I use that, too. One tablespooon for every five gallons, and I do five gallon batches. I think it'd probably do about twenty batches for me. My results have been great, but I haven't actually done any measurements to quantify the difference.

My favorite pale malt, lately, is definitely Maris Otter. I use it in everything, now, since it has such a nice, prominent rounded malt flavor that really shines when you use a good english yeast (such as White Labs 007 Dry English Ale), but it seems to do quite well even with Nottingham. Take...

As far as I know, denaturing enzymes isn't an issue with a thick decoction, either. Your grains have been steeping for a while before the decoction, and since the diastatic enzymes in malt are very water-soluble, they are left behind in the liquid. Since you're boiling mostly solids from the...

The final gravity will depend upon your mash schedule, too. And the amount of time your fermentation will take depends upon a couple factors: pitching rate and amount of dissolved O2. If you used pure oxygen and a bazillion yeast cells, that'll cut your time down a bit. Come to think of it...