Brainstorm - Malts Flavor Experiment

[Bobby_M]

I've been in a bit of a brewing funk since my kitchen project has taken up so much time. It's not that my pipeline is dry but I like to do things to enhance my understanding of brewing and ingredient contributions. Yes, I've read Designing Great Beers and I just can't get the feel for various malts by reading what has gone into comp winning beers.

What I'd like to do is try to produce like 8 different worts from various malt combinations trying to keep the overall percentage of specialty grains constant. I think it would be idea to mash them all at the same temp by isolating the mashes in small containers in a larger hot water bath. I just can't figure out what kind of container to do it in. I thought about making a shallow, wide vessel out of rigid foam but I'm not going to buy a sheet just for this.

I also thought about using foil chaffing trays over Sterno heat. Maybe oven mashing... but it only goes down to 170F.

After I figure out the where, I need to come up with the what. I'm thinking of using generic 2-row as the base for anything with a specialty.

1lb 2-row + 2oz crystal 10
1lb 2-row + 2oz crystal 40
1lb 2-row + 2oz crystal 80
1lb 2-row + 2oz crystal 120
1lb 2-row + 2oz chocolate
8oz 2-row + 10oz Vienna
8oz 2-row + 10oz Munich
18oz Marris
18oz Pils

Ok, I know that's 9. The goal is to keep the OG as constant as possible. Figuring on a no sparge efficiency (65%) and a batch size of .5 gallons (just enough for about a 6pack each, the OG should be around 1.048.

I'll use a mild hop like EKG to bitter with and skip the late additions to leave everything malt focused. I'll try to stay balanced at about 24 IBU. Ugh, dreading the 9 isolated boils but there's no easy way to fake it.

Will ferment in 1 gallon wine jugs with either Nottingham or US-05.

The end result will be a full blind tasting of all finished samples at a WHALES club meeting with taste impressions documented on a form.

Discuss... brainstorm, etc.

 

[Poindexter]

It seems like a whoellot of work for a air amount of knowledge but not very much good beer.

Why not just step the specialties at 155F, use a measured amount of DME with a ten minute boil?

You still get the fair amount of knowledge and not very much good beer, but save a bunch of time.

I agree the Crystals at least taste a little different mashed with base grains v/v steeping alone, but the difference isn't huge.

M2c

 

[HenryHill]

Have you tried chewing and tasting the grains against each other?

This is how I was taught and I find that on top of being an instantaneous method of discerning difference between grains, it is handy have each next to another for comparison, which sort of brackets that flavor with a reference to something else.

 

[Bobby_M]

Well the plan is to taste all samples in one sitting so there will be 9-way comparisons made. I think it would be a waste of time if it were just me tasting but I hope to get 40 people to learn from it.