First Big Pastry Stout - Mash Confusion

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luckybeagle

luckybeagle

Making sales and brewing ales.
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I have a 3 vessel HERMS setup. Each Kettle is 16 gallons.

I normally brew in the 1.040 - 1.070 range. This pastry stout is a whopping 1.145 and calls on 32# of grain!

I also boil with a steam condenser and average 0.75g boiloff per hour. The brew is indoors and venting without the steam condenser running is difficult to impossible.

I want to sparge this batch, but with so much grain my calculator is basically giving me a full volume mash unless I generate a ton of preboil wort and boil for hours and hours... like 6+ hours if I want to hit a 50/50 mash/sparge ratio. The blessing of a low hourly boil-off via steam condenser is a curse in this case!

I reallllly don't want to boil all day and, like I mentioned, boiling with the lid off and without the steam condenser isn't really an option (I'd have to keep my garage door open for hours, and I can't afford that much time to watch over my garage (it's detached and faces a park--nice neighborhood, but you never know).

My question is this: can I mash at less than 1 qt / lb of grain, or will my efficiency/wort quality drop like a rock?

IMG_4967.jpg
 
gah, i don't think there's any way around it--I'm in for a long boil if I expect to sparge. Oh well, I'll do it lid off with the garage door open, and will just hang out and drink beer while it commences. Not the worst thing in the world to do!

THIRTY TWO POUNDS OF GRAIN in this 5.5 gallon batch!

I shall call this beer, "Mash Hysteria" and design a graphic of an overflowing mash tun with a nervous brewer staring at it with bulging eyes
 
luckybeagle said:
My question is this: can I mash at less than 1 qt / lb of grain, or will my efficiency/wort quality drop like a rock?
Click to expand...
There seems to be some kind of a significant limit at 1 qt / lb. I remember researching this a while back. Braukaiser.com had some pretty good research on the subject. Maybe figure out the grain necessary to get your desired gravity with a single infusion and 90 minute boil. Then sparge into a separate kettle and make a smaller beer. Two beers for one, partigyle.
 
I haven't done it, myself... and I don't know how you'd do the calculations -- you'd probably have to wing it and just keep checking the gravity, but...

At least one brewer I know has mashed and sparged with wort (instead of water) to create a big beer. I think it was a barley wine in this case. There were reasons why he did it this way, but I assume it meant that he didn't need to do a huge amount of boiling in one session.

Just a thought. That's the fun part about brewing: experimentation! 🙂
 
day_trippr said:
fwiw, that's called an "iterative mash" and it is one solution for kettle constriction :)

Cheers!
Click to expand...
Didn’t know that! How is that different though from recirculating? I recirculate my wort throughout the mash via a herms coil in my HLT and back onto the top of the grain bed. I usually mash for hours since I can keep the temp stable and I usually have other things going on during brew day, and it helps with efficiency… but I know the efficiency would take a nosedive if I just relied on that here. How does an iterative mash differ?
 
Mashing too thick will give you oatmeal, and you may not be able to recirc thru your HERMS. You need to specify you minimum qt/lb that works in your system, and then split the water to get that minimum, and sparge with the rest, even if you don't get 50/50.

Do you fly sparge or batch sparge?

Brew on :mug:
 
Did a quick simulation with my spreadsheet, and it doesn't look like you can get 5.5 gal to fermenter (2 hr boil @ 0.75 gal/hr) at more than about 1.120 OG. With this much grain (32 lb) your lauter efficiency will be at best 60% - 65%, and therefore, your mash efficiency will be equal or less than that.

Got some stuff to do today, but will provide more details later.

Brew on :mug:
 
day_trippr said:
fwiw, that's called an "iterative mash" and it is one solution for kettle constriction :)
Click to expand...
This would very much be my solution too. A reiterated mash at this kind of target OG is probably going to add on less time, all things considered, than any other approach to getting to the same target other than dumping in a tonne of malt extract.
 
^^ Browser at work logged me in under a different, inactive username. oops!^^

Thanks everyone! I was confused initially about the iterative mashing idea, but it makes sense now:

  1. Split the grain bill in half
  2. Mash this batch at 1.25 or 1.5 qt/lb--whatever fairly evenly divides the strike and sparge water volumes
  3. Batch sparge this batch (if I'm going to sparge, this is my preferred method)
  4. Take the runnings, lauter them into the boil kettle, clean out the mash tun, and load in the other half of the grain
  5. Mash this fresh grain with the wort pulled from the first batch--recirculating the entire time (full volume mash on this batch).
  6. Lauter the super strong wort over to the boil kettle, take gravity, and adjust hopping and boiloff as needed
This did bring up a question for me, though: What about mash pH in the second batch??

I'll be using wort that is already around 5.4 pH to mash that second batch--and it has plenty of dark grains in it. What should I do (if anything) to adjust this second mash? Should I plug in the pH of my source water (the first runnings wort) as 5.4 pH and fill out the source water ions to reflect what I conditioned the first runnings to? This makes logical sense to me but I'd like to hear from sharper minds. I also do not own a reliable pH meter so.... thoughts?
 
thanks! That is super helpful. I'm just going to build out the water profile on my first infusion, sparge with dechlorinated tap water (it's super neutral here), and just add a little bit of baking soda to the second mash. Maybe 8 grams on the first mash and 3 on the second. That'll put my pH on my first mash around 5.4, and the second mash around 5.13. So I guess the wort pH will be around 5.13, which is low, but not terrible and kind of hard to avoid in big stouts. Had I not mixed alllllll of my grains together, I would've considered introducing the roast malts during the sparge or in the second batch and had less of a pH drop. Live and learn.

Is the general consensus on chalk still that it isn't worth fussing with? I have soda water on tap and could dose a small bottle with it, shake it vigorously and add it. That would (on paper) get my pH up, but is it effective at this level?
 
Thanks again!

One last question... I've got the water dialed in (it DOES involve chalk, but I'm going to do my darnedest to get it to dissolve--maybe even a drop of lactic acid can help since chalk requires an acid to dissolve and carbonic acid via Co2 might not be enough on its own).

My question is related to chlorides. I've been able to build up the water profile to 70ppm chlorides, 60ppm sulfates. Any more and I start to throw other levels out of wack. It's such a balance! But I see that Secret Level Brewing aims for 150ppm+ in chlorides in his gorgeous looking beers, which about half that amount in sulfates. Is 70ppm insufficient with such a big beer to provide a malty and rounded quality?

My source water is so neutral it's nearly RO, and I'm driving myself crazy getting everything in balance.

Should I try my best to match his water profile, or is 70ppm chloride fine?
 
luckybeagle said:
I'm going to do my darnedest to get it to dissolve--maybe even a drop of lactic acid can help since chalk requires an acid to dissolve and carbonic acid via Co2 might not be enough on its own)
Click to expand...
Won't adding acid to get the chalk to dissolve also counteract some of the alkalinity of the chalk?
 
Good points.

I'm still working through this task and am hoping for a little more insight.

Mash #1 will have 6.1 gallons of strike water. for its 16.1 pounds of grain. This is the first half of the grain bill.

Sparge for mash #1 will have 5.1 gallons of water.

This will result in 9.2 gallons of wort.

Mash tun will be emptied of grain after its fully lautered, and the second 16.1 pounds of grain will be put in with the 9.2 gallons of wort as an iterative mash.

That wort theoretically has the water parameters I conditioned it for, so do I consider that my new source water levels for mash #2? I'm really struggling with how to account for that.

My target ion levels are basically what Secret Level Brewing uses in his "best of his homebrewing career imperial stout:"

CA: 150
MG: 22
NA: 43
CL: 180
SO4: 90
pH: 5.33.

I really can't wrap my mind around what to build mash #1's water profile to. Should I try to get it as close to those numbers as possible? If I do that, I'll be diluting the mash when I sparge with the 5.1 gallons of untreated (aside from campden) water. Since the sparge for mash#1 is roughly 45% of the total volume used with the first grain bill, do I reduce those ion levels by 45% and plug those numbers in as the source water for mash #2, and then build those back up to my target levels mentioned above?

For example, if my first runnings wort looks like this after diluting it by 45%:

CA: 150 - 45% = 82
MG: 22 - 45% = 12
NA: 43 - 45% = 23
CL: 180 - 45% = 99
SO4: 90 - 45% = 50

Then do I plug those new ion levels in as the source water and buffer up from there for the fresh grain bill that will dough in to it?

Using wort as brewing liquor is breaking my brain with respect to getting the water dialed in. Any thoughts?
 
I treat all of my water the same, so sparge and mash have the same ions, except for pH. I also tend to use quite a bit of chloride and also increase sodium up to 100-150 ppm, without considering how much these will concentrate after boiling 3+ hours. Sulphate is merely 50 ppm for me most times.

I would aim for a higher mash pH though. I've gotten my pH up with chalk in roasty mashes before as well (I confirmed with a pH meter, not looking to start this discussion up), but baking soda will work as long as you don't go to crazy high sodium levels (like 200+ ppm). Just make sure you make don't use sparge water that's too acidic so your second mash will still be balanced.

Alternatively you can just determine how much water you'll use and add the right amount of salts to treat that volume of water to the boil. It won't be an exact match as you'd have lost some of these ions in your grain, but you could compensate by leaving out the amount of salts present in the water that would remain in your grain after mashing.

Regardless, water is less of an issue with these beers than the rest of the recipe and process. As long as your pH is on target and fermentation controlled you should be fine. If you really want to you can mix up salts in a glass and use that as a guideline for a new batch. My best stout had untreated water apart from pH. I've been trying to recreate it since.
 
Just to throw another idea, you can do the reiterated mash as larger batch with more sparge and smaller runnier second batch.
Have also seen the darker roasted grains held out of the mash and steeped separately as a means of improving the grain liquor ratio / sparge amount for high gravity stout.
My first barley wine I hit 1.105 so below target my next effort with barley wine was 14kg of grain and 23 litres to fermenter at 1.127. Similar grain bill but better process having also made the below imperial and learnt a lot.
My imperial stout I missed the target and only managed 1.107 due to my user error of clogging the malt pipe plate with perfectly crushed rye that fitted every hole perfectly. A truly stuck sparge.
I'm using a 70 litre capacity all in one.
Separate sparge water kettle.
I would recommend some glucanase if you can get it, saves space and the absorption that rice or oat hulls use.
Also you could chaptalise your stout with dextrose/ other fermentables to get the gravity up. The recipe I used for my IS required 2kg of dextrose in the fermenter added in stages.
I treated the whole volume of water as one and then tried not to fret about it. Calcium hydroxide will raise the pH without the chalk vagaries.
A partigyle should make you a great mild, or just sparge the grains and save a lot of wort for starters.
Don't forget the yeast nutrients, oxygen, a big starter and possibly reoxygenate during ferment / rousing.
Good luck.
 
I brew all of my stouts this way. The first mash is al base malt (half of the total weight), and I sparge with water. The second mash is the remainder of the base malt and all of the other grains mashed in the wort resulting from the first mash, also sparged with water.
 
G_robertus said:
I treat all of my water the same, so sparge and mash have the same ions, except for pH. I also tend to use quite a bit of chloride and also increase sodium up to 100-150 ppm, without considering how much these will concentrate after boiling 3+ hours. Sulphate is merely 50 ppm for me most times.

I would aim for a higher mash pH though. I've gotten my pH up with chalk in roasty mashes before as well (I confirmed with a pH meter, not looking to start this discussion up), but baking soda will work as long as you don't go to crazy high sodium levels (like 200+ ppm). Just make sure you make don't use sparge water that's too acidic so your second mash will still be balanced.

Alternatively you can just determine how much water you'll use and add the right amount of salts to treat that volume of water to the boil. It won't be an exact match as you'd have lost some of these ions in your grain, but you could compensate by leaving out the amount of salts present in the water that would remain in your grain after mashing.

Regardless, water is less of an issue with these beers than the rest of the recipe and process. As long as your pH is on target and fermentation controlled you should be fine. If you really want to you can mix up salts in a glass and use that as a guideline for a new batch. My best stout had untreated water apart from pH. I've been trying to recreate it since.
Click to expand...
This is awesome. And I'm realizing my shortcomings with understanding water chemistry now--at least with how I've been brewing.

Short reply for now but I thought I'd toss out a question before the workday starts.

I decided for ease I'd just adjust the mash water in mash#1 and simply acidify the sparge water (the calculator only calls for 1.15mL of lactic acid in the sparge, which seems low? Sparge volume is 5.1 gallons). I would treat the full volume of water, but it seems like that'd complicate things as my HLT is 15 gallons full, and pulling off 6.1 gallons for the mash would have me topping it up/diluting it/needing to adjust further in order to get it filled back up with identical water. Thoughts on this?

Anyway, from there, I'll be taking the 9.2 gallons of wort that this mash and sparge will produce, and will be adding additional baking soda (and chalk, dissolved in soda water as best as possible--don't hate), to keep the pH around 5.3 without bumping the sodium or calcium up crazy high.

It's kind of messing with my head still, though--I've never used THIS MUCH baking soda in a single 5.5g batch:

Mash 1 total volume: 11.2 gallons. Water report and salt additions based on malt bill and super neutral source water:
Add to mash #1 only.png


From there, I plug in the ion levels of that wort as the brewing liquor for mash#2. More baking soda and chalk is required to maintain a reasonable 5.3 pH:

Add to wort liquor for mash#2.png


That's 15 grams of baking soda in total. Granted it's a huge grain bill that is 2.5x bigger than what I normally brew, but I don't know if the baking soda will be perceptible flavor wise with that much being added?

My total sodium is 117.9 so maybe it won't be?
Ca: 154.2
MG 10.0
NA 117.9
CL 141
SO4 93

It doesn't appear that boil kettle additions would be necesary if I follow this idea. Does that all look and sound logical?
 
jerrylotto said:
I brew all of my stouts this way. The first mash is al base malt (half of the total weight), and I sparge with water. The second mash is the remainder of the base malt and all of the other grains mashed in the wort resulting from the first mash, also sparged with water.
Click to expand...
Correction, the liquor for my second mash comes from the second runnings from the first mash. Most of the wort from the first mass is set aside.
 
I'm not sure if I follow, but it's late for me so maybe that's why. Why do you need this much sparge water, or do you mash very thick and or boil very long? The amount of acid seems low, but I never use lactic acid so I could be wrong.

As far as baking soda, you'll taste it somewhat but it shouldn't be salty. However, if you match your sparge pH to your mash pH I'm not sure you'll need that much baking soda in the second mash. Wort should function as a buffer as well, so it's easier to maintain pH. Maybe you'll need some baking soda, but probably not that much. I've yet to test (and record) this with my new pH meter though. I think last time I didn't need to adjust it by much.
 
DuncB said:
Water has very little buffer in it. A little bit of acid can easily change pH or alkali.
Changing pH of a mash is different.
Click to expand...
I think it is more correct to say that some water has very little buffering power. The water's alkalinity is a measure of it's buffering capability. IIRC, alkalinity is measured by seeing how much acid is required to shift the pH to a specific value (which I don't recall, but is lower than 7.0.)

I believe that OP said their water was low alkalinity, so their water does in fact have low buffering power.

Brew on :mug:
 
Last edited:
Yes agree with you it's the minerals in the water that influences the buffering rather than the H2O.
You can't beat a bit of time playing around with the Henderson - Hasselbalch equation.
Luckily my brewing water is very bland, not everyone is so lucky.
 

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