Consistently high attenuation

[McMullan]

Well it worked.

Great, it worked.

I'm not really finding much evidence online to suggest that mashing at higher temperatures is the norm for British ales.

Try the scientific brewing literature, not Google. It's not unusual to mash at 70°C. The often recommended 65/66°C is a good starting point for home brewers, especially beginners. A more advanced brewer learns how to manipulate the mash to satisfy his/her own expectations, depending on the recipe, personal taste and equipment. The equipment I use now is far more accurate, efficient and consistent than the kit I started brewing with. I don"t need to hedge my bets at 65°C. Although I do mash at 65°C occasionally, when I need to max wort fermentability.

 

[AlexKay]

Try the scientific brewing literature, not Google. It's not unusual to mash at 70°C. The often recommended 65/66°C is a good starting point for home brewers, especially beginners.

I checked some of my books: Kunze suggests 62-63 as optimal for a single infusion and Bamforth (Scientific Principles …) says 65 C is “classic.” 70 C sounds awfully high; unusual, even, unless you’re going for a low-alcohol beer. Do you have any citations?

 

[McMullan]

I checked some of my books: Kunze suggests 62-63 as optimal for a single infusion and Bamforth (Scientific Principles …) says 65 C is “classic.” 70 C sounds awfully high; unusual, even, unless you’re going for a low-alcohol beer. Do you have any citations?

'Optimal' and 'classic' for commercial production of ethanol... Money. British brewing practices differ quite a bit from what's practiced in continental Europe. If you're a student of Kunze's, or Bamforth's for that matter, you won't be too intetested in brewing traditional English ales, I would've thought.

 

[AlexKay]

Kunze is echt-Deutsch, for sure. But Bamforth not interested in traditional English ales? For reals?

And… 70 C? Citations?

 

[McMullan]

Bamforth's expertise is mainly QA for big macros, not really non-lager traditional English ales. If you search the literature you'll find traditional English ales are brewed using a mash temperature range between 65-70°C. It's common knowledge. I'm not presenting anything novel here. If you haven't tried mashing at higher temperatures, I recommend you give it a go.

 

[AlexKay]

It seems you've gone from "70°C is not unusual" to "between 65-70°C." Ok, I won't argue with 65°C. 70°C, from the two secondary sources that I cited, is a bit ... say, 5°C ... high.

My literature search (ISI Web of Science) didn't turn up much beyond "Constant temperature mashing at 72 °C for the production of beers with a reduced alcohol content in micro brewing systems" which is more along the lines of what I said in my first post.

"It's common knowledge" isn't enough, given the notable lack of any sort of citation, to convince me that this is a good way (let alone a common way) to make a traditional English ale. If you've got something, I'm all ears. If you're not trying to convince anyone, well ... that's fine. Mash away, dude, it's your beer.

 

[McMullan]

I was clear about how I occasionally mash at 65°C. My typical mash temperature is more like 68°C. I often use 69°C for smaller English ales and occasionally 70°C when using a high (>30%) proportion of inverted brewing sugar. Otherwise I find the traditional English ale yeasts I pitch tend to dry out the beer far too much, reducing the chances of producing a nicely balanced ale. Mainly because there's a lot more to producing a fine ale than simply focusing on ethanol production. That's not to say higher mash temperatures limit ethanol production too much either. There's going to be ethanol in the end product even when a mash at 70°C is carried out. As much as you want really. If good mash conditions are maintained, e.g. with sufficient enzyme cofactors and high enough rates of enzyme-substrate collisions (occupied active sites), even beta amylase is relatatively stable at 70°C. If you want to limit your brewing by not mashing at higher temperatures, it's your prerogative, of course.

I'm not sure if Web of Science is the best resource to capture descriptive details of practices in traditional ale brewing in Britain, to be honest. Maybe try searching the archives of the Journal of the Institute of Brewing. Sufficiently well documented there, you'll find. All the way back to the late 19th century. Save WoS for opening your mind to the behaviour of enzymes.

 

[DuncB]

@AlexKay
Plenty of British beer recipes on Shut up about Barclay perkins website that are mashing 66+ some as high as 72. From a variety of breweries.
These are based on historical british brewery records, barley enzymes haven't changed in a millenia or the temperatures they work at and stop working at.
Stone Brewery mashes their levitation session ale at 69C so it's not an out of date concept or a new concept.

 

[Shenanigans]

What is puzzling me is that this recipe, and many others, call for 66°C and list an expected attenuation of 71%. How can this really be the case? Why do I need to mash hotter than others to achieve this? Presumably the attenuation in the recipe is also an indication of the body, mouthfeel and sweetness expected of the beer?

I don't know all the exact terminology but can it be that the base (or crystal) malt you are using is simply producting more fermentable wort than the malt used in the recipies you are comparing to? Different malster using slightly different method resulting in a different type of modification, resulting in higher fermentability i.e. the same amount but less complicated sugars being producted at the same mash temperature.

 

[Miraculix]

Do you actually start the mash at 66 c, meaning that the water would be at about 69c? Or do you start with 66 c water, cool it with the grain addition and bring it up again to 66c by heating?

Either way, I've yet to find a yeast that gives me only 71% attenuation when mashed at 66c. Even pub gives me more that than.

 

[AlexKay]

I'm not sure if Web of Science is the best resource to capture descriptive details of practices in traditional ale brewing in Britain, to be honest. Maybe try searching the archives of the Journal of the Institute of Brewing. Sufficiently well documented there, you'll find.

WoS indexes J. IoB. Its algorithm for presenting results may mean that older papers don’t show up near the top of searches, though.

@AlexKay
Plenty of British beer recipes on Shut up about Barclay perkins website

I appreciate having a source!

I also appreciate the change in tone of the conversation. Thanks.

 

[monkeymath]

I usually try and mash for high fermentability (and make adequately sized starters etc), but my attenuation almost never leaves the 70-75% range. (Saisons are an exception, but even there is see 85-90% rather than the 95%+ often reported.)

And yes, I have checked my thermometers as well as my hydrometer.

In an effort to increase attenuation, I had started to mash in at 60C and then raise the temp only after 10 minutes or so, to ensure beta-amylase would not denature before nutrients and enzymes were distributed in the wort etc.
Based on an article I encountered very recently (Optimization of Beer Brewing by Monitoring α-Amylase and β-Amylase Activities during Mashing), that line of thinking appears to be correct, but the temperature isn't: to actually preserve beta-amylase, you need to mash in below 55C. So it seems like what I was doing was actually slowly kill off the beta-amylase at a temperature below its optimum range and before gelatinisation of starches.

Anyhow, to bring it back to *your* problem, if you want to call it such: if you mash in high, it shouldn't make a ton of difference if the temperature drops a bit after a while (like half an hour). Beta-amylase denatures very quickly at 69C.
And for the whole strike-water-temp thing: it seems weird from a perspective of physics, but I have never observed that temperature drop at dough-in. Not when recirculating with the Grainfather and not when stirring manually in a pot. I'm admittedly puzzled as to what I might be doing wrong (or at least different from everyone else).

 

[Miraculix]

I usually try and mash for high fermentability (and make adequately sized starters etc), but my attenuation almost never leaves the 70-75% range. (Saisons are an exception, but even there is see 85-90% rather than the 95%+ often reported.)

And yes, I have checked my thermometers as well as my hydrometer.

In an effort to increase attenuation, I had started to mash in at 60C and then raise the temp only after 10 minutes or so, to ensure beta-amylase would not denature before nutrients and enzymes were distributed in the wort etc.
Based on an article I encountered very recently (Optimization of Beer Brewing by Monitoring α-Amylase and β-Amylase Activities during Mashing), that line of thinking appears to be correct, but the temperature isn't: to actually preserve beta-amylase, you need to mash in below 55C. So it seems like what I was doing was actually slowly kill off the beta-amylase at a temperature below its optimum range and before gelatinisation of starches.

Anyhow, to bring it back to *your* problem, if you want to call it such: if you mash in high, it shouldn't make a ton of difference if the temperature drops a bit after a while (like half an hour). Beta-amylase denatures very quickly at 69C.
And for the whole strike-water-temp thing: it seems weird from a perspective of physics, but I have never observed that temperature drop at dough-in. Not when recirculating with the Grainfather and not when stirring manually in a pot. I'm admittedly puzzled as to what I might be doing wrong (or at least different from everyone else).

Did you try a step mash?15 Minutes @ 56 C, 30 minutes @ 62 C , 30 minutes @ 72 C, 15 Minutes @ 77C gives me the highes fermentability.

 

[x3la]

I might add that by traditional English Ale's, I'm referring to those that I grew up drinking, beers available from late 1980's - present, mostly from family brewers still in business in the UK. Those are the recipes I am trying to replicate.

Ron Pattinson's book "Bitter!" has some interesting details on English Bitter of olde:

The author splits Pale Ales into two groups: the strong type and the light type. The strength of the former is "on account of the completeness of their fermentation". Or the very high degree of attenuation. We've seen Bass and Allsopp Pale Ales that were 85% to 90% attenuated. Their gravities weren't necessarily that high mostly 1060 to 1070 but the very high attenuation left some over 7% ABV.

19th century Pale Ale – what was it really like?

While there's considerable variation in strength, there's one thing all the beers have in common: a high degree of attenuation. Only three are below 80% apparent attenuation. Four are over 90%. All must have been pretty dry.

Late 19th century Pale Ales

A couple of the beers are very highly attenuated. Between 65% and 75% was typical for other styles of beer. Hodgson's Bitter Ale was pushing 90%. Very impressive. I wonder if the low pitching temperature (just 52º F) played a role?

In the recipes section there are indeed higher mash temperatures (and lower).

 

[monkeymath]

Did you try a step mash?15 Minutes @ 56 C, 30 minutes @ 62 C , 30 minutes @ 72 C, 15 Minutes @ 77C gives me the highes fermentability.

Yup. Same difference.

 

[DuncB]

@monkeymath
I have noticed that the strike temperature calculator works out too high a temperature for my Guten 70 as well. It does drop though, I have the element turned off once strike temp is reached and recirculate to ensure that all the water is well mixed including the dead space around the malt pipe. I recirculate during dough in as well.
I do think these all in one systems run better with a higher liquid to malt ratio and have a tendency to have the grain sitting at a lower temp than the sensor would have us believe due to heat loss between the element and sensor at the bottom and the outflow of recirculation at the top. I'm going to fit the wortometer and use a second sensor on my brew system to see what the difference is.

 

[DuncB]

So an update I found that 2.5 degrees positive put me bang on mash temp with 8kg of grain and 35 litres of water in the Guten.
The wortometer with temp probe fitted on the recirc pipe just before it went through the lid hole and onto the grain was consistently 0.3 degrees cooler than the temp measured by the sensor on the bottom of the kettle.