Kill Mash Out but Raise Temperature to Improve Efficiency?

[Ninoid]

I brew with BIAB without sparge and tried mash-out several times without any (measurable and visible) difference compared to brew without mash-out. I read that mash-out only makes sense with All-grain when the sparge lasts a long time to stop the enzymatic action.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Studying up on crystal malt. I use a lot of it, and people have scratched their heads and said I was using way too much. The beer is fine, however. I may know what the explanation is now.

I have tried to find sources other than forum posts. No offense. Maltsters and so on. One source says dark crystal malts are a lot sweeter than light malts. I have never used anything but 10L, so maybe that's why I'm not getting overpowering sweetness. I just wanted something to make beer sweeter to balance heavy hopping, without adding a lot of color or other flavors, and it has worked out for me. I tend to use a lot of hops, perhaps because I learned to brew back in the days when everything was hopped to death. I thought SNPA was unbalanced, so when I made my first IPA, I put crystal in it.

I am also reading that the reason dark crystal malts are sweeter is that the sweetness comes from caramel, which is burnt sugar. Burnt, but still sugar, and sugar is sweet. At least the ones that make crystal sweet are.

Caramelized sugar in crystal malt doesn't ferment well because the molecules from the roasting are big, but it's definitely sweet, and it carries a caramel flavor. This seems to answer a question I had a while back about adding plain old burnt sugar to beer recipes to get a caramel taste. It should work to provide the caramel flavor, assuming burned sucrose is also unfermentable, but it looks like it would also add sweetness, just like crystal. I don't think the sweetness would ferment out, because it comes from unfermentable sugars. I guess dark crystal malt is easier.

I also looked up the solubility of sugar in hot water. I had to go with sucrose because I'm not spending the day trying to find a chart for beer sugars. I would guess the principle is the same. Sucrose is considerably more soluble in 170-degree water than 155-degree water. Looks like you can get around 10 more gravity points for sucrose at saturation, which is worth something. Would it be helpful below the saturation threshold? I guess it could. People complain about efficiency with the Braumeister, but I keep hitting my OG with recipes I used to use in a kettle. I wonder if mashing out has helped.

I don't think viscosity is the whole picture. I don't know why people looked at viscosity instead of solubility, but I guess there is a reason. Wort seems pretty thin already at 155.

Seems like there are never any solid answers, but I am digging.

 

[doug293cz]

I also looked up the solubility of sugar in hot water. I had to go with sucrose because I'm not spending the day trying to find a chart for beer sugars. I would guess the principle is the same. Sucrose is considerably more soluble in 170-degree water than 155-degree water. Looks like you can get around 10 more gravity points for sucrose at saturation, which is worth something. Would it be helpful below the saturation threshold? I guess it could. People complain about efficiency with the Braumeister, but I keep hitting my OG with recipes I used to use in a kettle. I wonder if mashing out has helped.

I don't think viscosity is the whole picture. I don't know why people looked at viscosity instead of solubility, but I guess there is a reason. Wort seems pretty thin already at 155.

People don't look at solubility because it plays no role in mashing. The solubility limit of maltose at 151°F (~66°C) is 66.7% by weight (66.7°Plato), which corresponds to an SG of 1.329. If you could mash at 0.75 qt/lb (I doubt you could stir this) the max wort concentration you could get is 32.8 wt% (32.8°Plato), or 1.143 SG, which is less than one half of the solubility limit.

The fact that sugar (and most other things) dissolve faster in hotter vs. cooler water also plays no role in mashing. Hydrolysis (the chemical reaction, catalyzed by amylase enzymes, that chops starch up into sugar molecules) creates sugar molecules that are already in solution. There is never any solid sugar to be dissolved in a mash. And since you are well below the solubility limit, no solid sugar will precipitate out of the wort.

Viscosity is looked at since it will affect the rate of wort draining (viscosity is often measured by draining rate), and probably the amount of wort retained in the grain (lower viscosity wort should drain more completely.) The viscosity change of pure sugar solutions going from mash temp to mash-out temp is about a 15% reduction. I have not seen any experimental data on grain absorption rates vs. lautering temp, so the size of any effect is unknown. I can say with confidence that any viscosity effect would be smaller when sparging vs. a no-sparge lauter.

Brew on

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

A lot of the sugar is inside grain husks, so how can it be that it doesn't need to be rinsed out of there? Grain from a sparged mash is still sweet, so there is still sugar in it when the process is finished. Surely some of that sugar can be extracted some way.

It's hard for me to believe viscosity is a big deal here, since wort is so runny at 155. I used to teach college kids how to use a Lorenz viscometer. I don't know if it's fair to compare grain to a skinny glass funnel, but with a viscometer, the speed is what you look at. Thick liquids and thick ones eventually pass through. It's just the time that varies, unless you have something really thick that coats the instrument and won't move. Can it really be that you lose anything significant by dropping from 170 to 155?

 

[mashdar]

I sparge with cold water now because it's easier and I'm lazy. I've been pretty surprised at how little effect it had wrt efficiency and rate of flow through the bed.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Did it have any effect you could measure?

 

[mashdar]

Did it have any effect you could measure?

No, but with small kids my timing is all over the place, so I don't consider my process particularly dialed in. There's a lot of noise.

But with a pretty coarse crush and well modified base malt I get >80% efficiency without much fuss, so it's definitely not hurting much.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I am thinking about the way the Braumeister works. It keeps pumping wort through the mash, so it's different from sparging with a pitcher or bucket and plain water. The pump will keep running all the way to 190 degrees, so it's running during a 170-degree mashout. Running 170-degree wort through grain continuously for 15 minutes must give it a pretty thorough rinse, but because it's wort, not water, it has to leave a lot of sugar in the grain. You can't rinse wort out with wort. All you can do is make sure you've mixed everything up well. So if I really cared about peak efficiency, I would have to pour some clean water over the grain at the end.

I feel like I should keep doing the mashout just to make sure I give the system a chance to do a good extraction, but I am not inclined to fool around with extra water, since things are working fine as they are. I don't think I need to think about denaturing the enzymes, since no one else seems to see any benefit in it.

 

[OleBrewing]

I am thinking about the way the Braumeister works. It keeps pumping wort through the mash, so it's different from sparging with a pitcher or bucket and plain water. The pump will keep running all the way to 190 degrees, so it's running during a 170-degree mashout. Running 170-degree wort through grain continuously for 15 minutes must give it a pretty thorough rinse, but because it's wort, not water, it has to leave a lot of sugar in the grain. You can't rinse wort out with wort. All you can do is make sure you've mixed everything up well. So if I really cared about peak efficiency, I would have to pour some clean water over the grain at the end.

I feel like I should keep doing the mashout just to make sure I give the system a chance to do a good extraction, but I am not inclined to fool around with extra water, since things are working fine as they are. I don't think I need to think about denaturing the enzymes, since no one else seems to see any benefit in it.

sounds like you are leaving some sugars behind but not a big deal in small batches. I batch sparge in a three keggle setup (10 gallon finished batches) as a little more malt to make up some gravity versus time fly sparging is worth it to me. i recirculate the mash for the entire process, first runnings are very high gravity, after batch sparging (fresh water to bring me to boil volume) of course gravity less. after everything is in the boil kettle i may run extra water through the mash and collect some very light wort and collect in jugs to be used at a later date for yeast starters, i do have to add a little dry malt extract to bring it up gravity but then i am saving on extract.

 

[doug293cz]

A lot of the sugar is inside grain husks, so how can it be that it doesn't need to be rinsed out of there?

Neither the starch nor the sugar is in the husks. The husks are a protective covering for the endosperm, which makes up most of the mass of the kernels. The starch is in the endosperm. In order to convert the starch to sugar, it must first be gelatinized, so that there is water surrounding the starch chains (this is what happens when you cook rice, for example.) The starch needs to be gelatinized first because the reaction that breaks a starch chain bond also consumes a water molecule. Each bond broken eliminates one water molecule. Thus you need a water molecule basically in contact with the bond in the starch chain. If the starch is not gelatinized, you do not have that pre-condition met.

At the end of the mash, you basically have cellulose particles of various shapes swimming in wort. There should be no starch left. The wort is a solution of mostly sugar, with some proteins and other minor components. There is no solid sugar. When you drain the wort, you are left with a thin coating of wort on all of the particles. If you sparge, you dilute the wort coating the cellulose particles, and most of the diluted wort drains away, with it's sugar. What's left coating the particles after a sparge is much diluted wort.

Brew on

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

The endosperm is inside the husk.

 

[doug293cz]

The endosperm is inside the husk.

Before you crush the kernels, yes. With a good crush, the endosperm will be broken into two or more pieces, and mostly separated from the husks.

Brew on

 

[SFC Rudy]

It would be something to see everyone here brewing in a big convention center, all at once, using the equipment they all use at home. Kettles, Braumeisters, Clawhammer systems, Spike systems, BIAB, crazy HERMS systems...

All to get the same result.

Somehow we manage to exchange information that helps all of us.

I’ve been flamed before for suggesting that if you give 100 home brewers the exact same recipe we would brew it 100 different ways and still end up with the same beer.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Hobby or religion?