Mash Out or not to Mash Out?

[funkswing]

Do you mash out?

Do you not mash out?

Would if I could (not enough head space)?

Why mash out?

EDIT: By "mash out" I mean specifically raising the temperature of the grain bed to stop enzymatic activity (>168 F), not simply reducing mash viscosity.

 

[bob1852]

Nope.

I don't mash out because 1) I haven't been convinced it helps with anything, and 2) I'm lazy and it saves some time.

 

[funkswing]

+1 to that. I want some ppl to convince us about the benefits of mashing out (at least for batch sparging)

 

[Germelli1]

I might be misunderstanding the meaning of mashing out, but I guess I don't do it and I fly sparge. My process is to pour 175* water into my HLT (bottling bucket) then fly sparge for about 30-40 minutes. By the end that sparge water is about 160-165 degrees.

 

[bob1852]

I might be misunderstanding the meaning of mashing out, but I guess I don't do it and I fly sparge. My process is to pour 175* water into my HLT (bottling bucket) then fly sparge for about 30-40 minutes. By the end that sparge water is about 160-165 degrees.

What temp does your grain bed get up to after a 30-40 min. sparge with 160-175 water?

The reason I ask is that I believe the mash-out is to get your grain bed up to ~168ish quickly. You can then sparge with 168ish water to keep your bed at that "magic" temp.

What I do (and in fact, just did).

Finished mashing at 154. Drained the first runnings, then added 5 gallons of 187*F sparge water which got the bed to 169.

Drain the sparge and proceed to boil....

 

[Germelli1]

What temp does your grain bed get up to after a 30-40 min. sparge with 160-175 water?

The reason I ask is that I believe the mash-out is to get your grain bed up to ~168ish quickly. You can then sparge with 168ish water to keep your bed at that "magic" temp.

What I do (and in fact, just did).

Finished mashing at 154. Drained the first runnings, then added 5 gallons of 187*F sparge water which got the bed to 169.

Drain the sparge and proceed to boil....

I don't have an electric temp probe so I cant give you an exact graphical analysis of my temps, but from pulling out the old lab thermometer every 5ish minutes it looks (VERY roughly) like this:

Keep in mind I just put that together in paint so it isn't the best haha. And to explain it it words: The temp climbs for about the first 15-20 minutes until it sits at 166-169. The reason it isn't exact is my bottling bucket is uninsulated so it loses some heat in the sparge water during the time it takes to sparge. The temp plateaus when the grain bed and sparge water are about the same temperature and at that point the specific heat capacity of the grains keeps the temperature in the mid to upper 160's.

 

[funkswing]

Really? I thought that was surely an Excel-made graph.

 

[samc]

Have done it the last few brews. Have not really noticed a difference in the finished product so I am most likely going to stop mashing out.

 

[funkswing]

For me, the purpose of a mash out lies more in reducing mash viscosity (thinning the mash) than stopping enzymatic activity. It is purposeful when you are doing thick mash ratios, like at 1qt/lb. Before running off, it is beneficial to "top-off" the mash with hot/boiling water to aid in the wort collection.

From that point of view I do mash out, but I don't get my grain bed to the 168 F to stop enzymatic activity. I merely add water to reduce the viscosity.

 

[Germelli1]

Really? I thought that was surely an Excel-made graph.

Thanks! I added some "verbal" explanations to help make it more clear.

 

[Gomer83]

Hi all,
Just a quick question.
I'm about to embark on my first all grain brew. The recipe I'm going off they do a mash out. If I wanted to skip this I guess I would just sparge using the "mash out" water stated plus the sparge water stated?
Is this correct?

 

[RM-MN]

Hi all,
Just a quick question.
I'm about to embark on my first all grain brew. The recipe I'm going off they do a mash out. If I wanted to skip this I guess I would just sparge using the "mash out" water stated plus the sparge water stated?
Is this correct?

Whether to mash out or not is dependent on the method you choose to sparge. If you plan to fly sparge and take the hour of more to do the proper fly sparge, then since your mash will be in the conversion temperature range for that entire time, you would use a mash out to stop enzymatic action before you start the sparge.

Unless you are doing huge amounts of beer at a time, fly sparging doesn't gain you much over doing a double batch sparge and requires that you monitor the runoff so you don't raise th pH enough to extract tannins, plus it take time to bring the mash to mash out temps and then more time yet to do the fly sparge. For most of us a mash out isn't needed.

For this batch, plan a batch sparge. When you drain the mash tun, measure the amount of wort collected and then calculate the amount needed to get to your planned pre-boil. Divide this in two to get the amount needed for each batch sparge. Since your grains will already be saturated you don't need to plan for any absorption. You also don't need to heat the water for the sparge, just dump it in, stir well, and drain.

 

[kh54s10]

I didn't answer the vote because it needs to be altered. IMO, mashout is necessary if fly sparging and not necessary with batch sparging.

When fly sparging, if you want to lock in your mash profile, you must stop the enzymatic action. It will continue to change during a 45 - 60 minute sparge. If you don't mashout it is like not setting any temperature for the mash in the first place.

When batch sparging you will have the wort at a temperature that stops the action fairly quickly.

 

[McKnuckle]

The original post (and voting apparatus) is 7 years old, BTW.

 

[mongoose33]

I didn't answer the vote because it needs to be altered. IMO, mashout is necessary if fly sparging and not necessary with batch sparging.

When fly sparging, if you want to lock in your mash profile, you must stop the enzymatic action. It will continue to change during a 45 - 60 minute sparge. If you don't mashout it is like not setting any temperature for the mash in the first place.

When batch sparging you will have the wort at a temperature that stops the action fairly quickly.

<Yeah, I know it's 7 years old but still worth a conversation>

I'm missing something here. What's the benefit of a mash-out today? There's evidence, including my own, that almost all conversion is done within 30 minutes. Once you've converted virtually all starch to sugar, what difference does it make whether the enzymes have been denatured or not? They're going to be denatured as soon as the boil reaches mash-out temp anyway.

And FWIW: I've done a lot of traditional mash tun mashing using batch sparge, and currently I'm doing BIAB. The crush for BIAB is finer, of course, but still.

My most recent batch showed a 30-min sample gravity of 1.044; at 60 minutes of mashing it snuck up to 1.046. Looks to me like whatever the enzymes are doing toward the end, it's not much (at least in my case here).

 

[McKnuckle]

The reason for a mash-out, or to put it in specific terms, to stop further enzymatic activity, is because beta amylase takes a long time to work. Conversion of starches to sugar may be complete very soon, especially in a hotter mash, but beta does not "die" immediately and takes its time crunching long chain sugars into short ones. This increases the fermentability of the mash, resulting in more attenuation and higher ABV/lower FG, all things being equal.

Personally, I just sparge with hot enough water, and have my boil kettle going as soon as the bottom is covered during lautering. [EDIT: Whoops, that's kind of what you're saying mongoose - sorry if this post was redundant or unnecessary.]

 

[doug293cz]

The reason for a mash-out, or to put it in specific terms, to stop further enzymatic activity, is because beta amylase takes a long time to work. Conversion of starches to sugar may be complete very soon, especially in a hotter mash, but beta does not "die" immediately and takes its time crunching long chain sugars into short ones. This increases the fermentability of the mash, resulting in more attenuation and higher ABV/lower FG, all things being equal.

...]

I think you have mixed up beta and alpha amylase. Beta works very fast at lower temps to chop fermentable maltose units off of the ends of poly-saccharides (starches and dextrins.) Beta amylase denatures quite rapidly above about 145°F (half life of about 20 minutes @ 63°C/145°F.) Alpha amylase randomly chops polysaccharides into to pieces, and eventually the pieces get small enough to be fermentable, but this process is slower than beta amylase. Alpha also is more temperature resistant than beta. It has a half life of about 20 minutes @ 70°C/158°F. Mash out is really to stop the continued action of alpha amylase, as beta is pretty much all denatured after an hour mash at 150°F. Ref.

Brew on

 

[McKnuckle]

I think you have mixed up beta and alpha amylase.[/URL]

I don't think I'm mixing them up, although I didn't express myself all that well so I get why you'd say that. Here's a quote from the reference you cited:

"The higher the temperature the faster the &#946;-amylase will be denatured and the less fermentable sugars are produced. At lower temperatures these enzymes will be able to work for a longer time and will produce more fermentable sugars. But because of the lower temperature these reactions will take longer and a longer mash may be necessary to achieve a sufficient conversion of the starch."

So really, beta takes longer at lower temps in particular. But even at higher temps, it declines in population but sticks around long enough that if you keep a warmer mash going, beta will break down more fermentables and have an influence on attenuation. If one truly wants to stop that influence, one must get the wort temp up past 160+ and keep it there, hence the hot sparge/mash-out/onset of boil - however you approach it.

That's all I meant... You can prove this to yourself by mashing one beer for 40 minutes at 158F, then mashing another for 90 minutes at 158F. The latter beer will attenuate lower by at least a couple percentage points.

 

[dyqik]

<Yeah, I know it's 7 years old but still worth a conversation>

I'm missing something here. What's the benefit of a mash-out today? There's evidence, including my own, that almost all conversion is done within 30 minutes.

All my recent mashes around 150-154F have taken at least 90 minutes to get to 95% conversion/extract* efficiency, with gravity rising by 10-15 points between 60 minutes and 90 minutes. Starch tests have been mostly negative throughout, so it's probably not because the enzymes are slow or weak, but because the starch is taking a long time to hydrolyze. Admittedly, I've been using older base grain (up to 2.5 years old, but freshly milled as fine as my cereal killer with go, with conditioned grain). Although I might have been screwing up the starch tests, and it's actually a symptom of poor enzyme content in old grain. If it is the case that it's taking so long to hydrolyze the starches so that the enzymes can get to work, I suspect that it's also gradually releasing enzymes from the grain into the mash. In my case, a mash out would still seem useful.

I've now used up all my old grain (having thrown out the last of it due to an Indian Meal Moth infestation), so we'll see if any of this carries over to fresh grain on my next brew.

*I'm measuring against the conversion efficiency tables on the braukaiser wiki using a refractometer with samples from recirculating with my RIMS system.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

I mash out but its not really a mash out per say I just raise the temp to allow for fly sparging so its the same temp 170F

 

[SlitheryDee]

I don't. I can't see how it would benefit me currently. Nothing about my process is really precise enough for me to point at enzymatic action going on a few minutes too long as the culprit of any problems I might have with a beer. In other words, I'll have to get a lot of other stuff dialed in perfectly before turning my attention to mashing out.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

How many of you who mash in a cooler conversion have attempted to do a proper mash out?

I've tried it several times and I always found myself disappointingly off on target temperature after adding a pre-measured quantity of boiled water in an attempt to bring the mash to 168 degrees F. for the mash out.

I finally gave up on mashing out and not long after that gave up on fly sparging and switched to batch sparging. Next will come a shot at no sparge if I ever get around to replacing my coolers braid with a bag.

My vote was for "I don't mash out".

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Yes and no.

I raise the HLT temp to sparge temp. As this is happening, the wort is still circulating. Through this rise and the sparge, in theory, aren't I effectively mashing out by default?

 

[eric19312]

I mash out sometimes. Especially on lower ABV beers where I imagine I'd want to fix the non fermentable sugars. I have no issue with headspace because I have direct fire mas.h tun

 

[Comfort_Zone]

Never bothered to, don't think it's really affected my brews.

 

[mashinary]

I do, but it's because I'm mashing for 10-11 gallon batches in a 48 QT cooler. If I don't mash out, I'd have to sparge twice.

 

[doug293cz]

I do, but it's because I'm mashing for 10-11 gallon batches in a 48 QT cooler. If I don't mash out, I'd have to sparge twice.

Why not just mash thinner? It might improve your conversion efficiency. Of course a double batch sparge could also bump up your lauter efficiency by about 3 percentage points.

Brew on

 

[mashinary]

Why not just mash thinner? It might improve your conversion efficiency. Of course a double batch sparge could also bump up your lauter efficiency by about 3 percentage points.

Brew on

Yeah, mash pretty thin already, it mostly depends on the grist. For most beers, I'm only mashing out with 1 - 1.5 gallons. Efficiency wise, I'm consistently at 75%. When I do a 5.5 gallon batch I do no sparge and with that I hit 70%.