Getting the most out of grains

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Try heating your sparge water to 185 next time. That way when it mixes with your 145 degree grain bed it comes to ~170. A little hotter is fine, 175 is fine. You won't extract tannins. I am now fully convinced that is a myth.

Wow, that's pretty cool.
 
Looks like your boil went fine. Saaz is not going to bitter as much as the big boys. What style was this looking to be?

No style in particular. This was my 2nd all grain mash. I like to jump straight into experimentation. My local brew shop only had saaz pellets at disposal. So considering that, I just ordered 12oz of different strains from ebay.

Here was my bill:
6lbs 2-row
6lbs pale ale malt
1lb munich
1lb pils
1/2lb crystal (not sure about L)
Nottingham ale yeast

It will probably be something like a munich? I know pils wasn't used as base malt but it's going to be mild like a munich, anyhow.
 
The temp. 145-150 is OK as long as you give it enough time you'll get more beta-amylase more alc. ( hotter taste). It's probably best to do both beta and Alpha (the higher the temp the more alph-amylase and the more dextrins)
Low mash temp. require more time & will produce a thinner product while the higher temp will be done quicker and have more body but less alc.

A rest 145*- 150* will help get more ferm to alc. provided you give it enough time (probably 90-150min) if you mash out from here, but 60 min would be suffiecnt if you were to do a alpha rest 151*-157* any temperatur above 158 your done.

Doing both you'll get more alc. plus some body & sweatness. It seems to take a total of two hours combined for both rest. (90+30) or (60+60) or (30+60)
Depends on what you're wanting to do.
 
OK kool your just having some fun nothing wrong with that. If you are trying to dial in the process of brewing all grain you most likely should go with something to judge your numbers against.
 
The temp. 145-150 is OK as long as you give it enough time you'll get more beta-amylase more alc. ( hotter taste). It's probably best to do both beta and Alpha (the higher the temp the more alph-amylase and the more dextrins)
Low mash temp. require more time & will produce a thinner product while the higher temp will be done quicker and have more body but less alc.

A rest 145*- 150* will help get more ferm to alc. provided you give it enough time (probably 90-150min) if you mash out from here, but 60 min would be suffiecnt if you were to do a alpha rest 151*-157* any temperatur above 158 your done.

Doing both you'll get more alc. plus some body & sweatness. It seems to take a total of two hours combined for both rest. (90+30) or (60+60) or (30+60)
Depends on what you're wanting to do.

This is really great info.

I would normally prefer best of both worlds, the cheat taste I had from my secondary was strong in the alcohol department, not that it's above 5%. I don't really dig that.

Still going to drink it though, I mean c'mon.


As for experimentation, you can only go so far before you mess up a beer. I'm talking more along the lines of mixing two recipes together, hybrids.

BUT next, I'm going to be trying my hand in making a Gulden Draak clone. These are only available in assorted Belgian 6 packs (only 1 per 6 beers) and only available during Christmas time, and EXPENSIVE as all hell. total BS. I started brewing so I could cheat the system.
 
I mash in a 5 gallon rubbermaid as well~ holla!

Try preheating your cooler with 1-2 quarts of near-boiling water for a couple of minutes (close it and slosh the hot water around inside), dumping & immediately adding your hot liquor before mashing in. This way your mash temp won't drop as far due to inefficiency, aka heat being lost to the vessel in addition to the grain.

Also, there are a couple of really great BasicBrewing.com podcasts covering joint experiments with BYO magazine, where they experimented with stirring at different times during the mash and the effects of grist thickness on mash efficiency. They might be worth checking out.
 
Try preheating your cooler with 1-2 quarts of near-boiling water for a couple of minutes (close it and slosh the hot water around inside), dumping & immediately adding your hot liquor before mashing in. This way your mash temp won't drop as far due to inefficiency, aka heat being lost to the vessel in addition to the grain.

BTW, not a great thing to try for the first time on a beer you're brewing for someone's wedding or another important event, in case you over- or undershoot target mash temp by too much. Brew a simple pale ale & make notes on the different ways it effects your process, & decide if it's worth keeping. (good opportunity for a hop experiment also?)
 
Get yourself a copy of beersmith and enter in your equipment profile, it will get your temps and target volumes for you.
 
After your initial posting, you provided the following detail:

Ok, well, I'm mashing in a 5 gallon rubbermaid water cooler. The setup seems to be working well.

So the mash: Heated up 4 gallons of water to 145F, threw it in the mash tun, quickly added all of the grain bill, stirred for 30 seconds and sealed for 60 min.
I then checked the temp, which was 143F. Opened up the valve and let all of the water drain. I then repeated the whole process with 3 gallons of water at 160F.
That ended up with 5 gallons of wort with a gravity of 1.04.
=======================================

Comment 1: 14.5 pounds of grain is way to much grain for your mash tun to handle if you use a normal (low end) water to grist ratio, which is about 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain. Your recipe would require your mash tun to handle 5.4 gallons of water, plus the grain. You could either cut back the entire recipe, or mash in two batches.

Comment 2: You should put your grain in your mash tun first. Then add some water, stir to distribute the water/heat, then add some more water, etc. This is easier on the enzymes; there is less risk of denaturing them.

Comment 3: Mash temperatures specify the temperature of the mash, that is, the combined grain and water combination, not just the water. When you add 4 gallons of water at 145F to 14.5 pounds of grain at say 80F, your resulting mash temperature is going to be less than 140F. I calculated that your water would need to be at least 151F to give a mash temperature of 140F. Your water would need to be 157F to give you a mash temperature of 145F. There are formulas and calculators to determine the required temperature of your strike water.

Comment 4: You indicate the temperature at the end of the mash was 147F. I don't know how that is possible with a mash starting temperature that was less than 140F. You should stir the grain before measuring the temperature because it will normally be cooler at the bottom than the top.

Comment 5: The first step in mashing is gelatinization of the starches in the grain, which is most active for barley between 140F and 150F. It physically breaks down the starch, making it accessible to the conversion enzymes. Some gelatinization occurs below 140F and some above 150F, and alpha amalyze can convert a small amount of starch without gelatinization, but without gelatinization the process is very, very inefficient. I believe that is the main reason you got such a low extract; you never got your mash termperature into the range for gelatinization at the beginning of your mash.

Comment 6: It's hard to figure out what happened when you did a second sparge with 3 gallons of water at 160F. The mash temperature was probably between 150F and 155F. You would get gelatinization and conversion during this part of your mash. However the beta amylase was probably inactivated quickly, so you would have incomplete conversion and end up with a dextrinous, non-attenuative wort. The wort would be thick and sticky, so you probably left behind a larger than normal amount of sugars in the grain when you simply ran off the wort without sparging.

Comment 7: Very hard water is another possible cause of poor conversion and lower extract efficiency.

What might have happened is just conjecture on my part. I really appreciate your leap into grain brewing. It can be very creative, but the mashing prcess imposes certain limits that are worthwhile to understand. I highly recommend John Palmer's book, How to Brew.

Best wishes for your next batch.

VL
 
Back
Top