Mash thickness

[shamfein]

Hey all,

this is going to sound like a very silly question to alot of ye well versed brewers.

My question is what is the reason for the ideal mash thickness?

My process is fill my mash tun with as much water as possible which is about 25 Litres of water, add my grains, this brings my mash tun to its absolute limit.

What it means to me is that i only need minimal sparge water to get my 30 litre start boil point.

Is having less water better for starch conversion?

Cheers for the help

 

[mattdee1]

Few reasons I can think of to pay attention to ratio of strike water volume to weight of grain, rather than blindly filling up to a certain point and dumping in the grain:

- The ratio will impact the lautering performance of your setup, so you want to figure out what works for your gear and your process
- Thicker mashes, I believe, tend to have lower conversion
- The ratio will affect the temperature of your mash after you mix the strike water and grains. Paying attention to it thus helps you hit your target mash temps.
- Supposedly, the best efficiency is achieved if the first and second runnings are equal volume. I don’t really understand why, but apparently somebody “proved” this at some point. This is probably more academic than practical, though.

None of this is going to make or break your beer.

 

[Yooper]

In my experience, as long as you hit your mash pH, the thickness of the mash is a minor factor.

In theory, a very thin mash should produce a more fermentable wort, but I'm not sure that has been tested/proven.

The biggest issue with a very thin mash is simply having a too-high mash pH, in my opinion. If you've covered that, then there should be no issue at all.

 

[doug293cz]

Few reasons I can think of to pay attention to ratio of strike water volume to weight of grain, rather than blindly filling up to a certain point and dumping in the grain:

- The ratio will impact the lautering performance of your setup, so you want to figure out what works for your gear and your process
- Thicker mashes, I believe, tend to have lower conversion
- The ratio will affect the temperature of your mash after you mix the strike water and grains. Paying attention to it thus helps you hit your target mash temps.
- Supposedly, the best efficiency is achieved if the first and second runnings are equal volume. I don’t really understand why, but apparently somebody “proved” this at some point. This is probably more academic than practical, though.

None of this is going to make or break your beer.

Kai Troester demonstrated the lauter efficiency optimum at equal runnings volumes. The model as been independently verified by me, @pricelessbrewing, and probably many others. It's a simple model based on dilution and rinsing. And, it is very practical for batch sparging. The results do not apply when fly sparging.

Kai also did experiments that showed better conversion efficiency with thinner (more water) mashes.

Brew on