Mash Didn't Convert! A lesson in diastatic power

[seanppp]

I brewed a stout with a lot of non-enymatic grains in the mash (tons of oats, Munich, crystal, dark grains) and so I used some Castle Chateau Diastatic malt to boost the diastatic power to ensure conversion. Beersmith lists it as 300 Litner. So I calculated my mash to have about 65 Litner total diastatic power. I mashed for 60 minutes, tasted it, and it wasn't sweet at all. I mashed another 30 minutes. Still not sweet. I went back and looked up Chateau Diastatic a bit and, lo and behold, it is 300 WK(!), which is only 90 Litner. Therefore, my mash had a diastatic power of 24 Litner. Therefore it didn't convert. I fooled myself into thinking that the wort tasted the way it did because there were so many dark grains. I pitched the yeast, and now, about 48 hours later. Nothing.

Lesson: Keep an eye on your mash's diastatic power when you're using a lot of non-enzymatic malts!

PS. I don't have access to any enzymes.. Anyone have an idea of how I can save the beer? I've heard Beano works. Not sure if I can find that here in Europe.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

All I can think of is try to find some amalyse enzyme and add several teaspoons of it to the fermenter. Not sure if that will work. The store where you purchase malts, yeast, hops, etc... should have this, or be able to order it for you.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

Any follow-up here?

 

[rlmiller10]

I brewed a stout with a lot of non-enymatic grains in the mash (tons of oats, Munich, crystal, dark grains) and so I used some Castle Chateau Diastatic malt to boost the diastatic power to ensure conversion. Beersmith lists it as 300 Litner. So I calculated my mash to have about 65 Litner total diastatic power. I mashed for 60 minutes, tasted it, and it wasn't sweet at all. I mashed another 30 minutes. Still not sweet. I went back and looked up Chateau Diastatic a bit and, lo and behold, it is 300 WK(!), which is only 90 Litner. Therefore, my mash had a diastatic power of 24 Litner. Therefore it didn't convert. I fooled myself into thinking that the wort tasted the way it did because there were so many dark grains. I pitched the yeast, and now, about 48 hours later. Nothing.

Lesson: Keep an eye on your mash's diastatic power when you're using a lot of non-enzymatic malts!



PS. I don't have access to any enzymes.. Anyone have an idea of how I can save the beer? I've heard Beano works. Not sure if I can find that here in Europe.

Probably too late as the carbohydrate chains were never divided into sugars and thus never washed out of the protein matrix during the mash. So you would would not have that many carbs in the wort that could be converted to sugar with the correct enzymes but I suspect you gravity will be very low.

Just for curiosity did you take a gravity reading of the wort?