No Carapils........ 15 minute mash instead

[Owly055]

Yesterday I brewed an extremely light pilsner type brew using Saas. Lacking pilsner malt, I used two row and some sugar to keep it extremely pale. I wanted to add some carapils to rescue it from having too little body, but didn't have that either, so I did my 15 minute "inline mash", which experience shows will cost me about one half of percentage point of alcohol, but leave me with increased body. Increasing the mash time to 20-30 minutes results in full attenuation, as those of us who have played with very short mashes have found. 15 minutes results in full conversion but lower fermentability. I've found that this can be corrected for by adding some STC 1000 fungal amylase in the fermenter.....

For those who didn't see the old thread where we were working to reduce the length of the brew session, here is the techinque in a nutshell. It works quite well. You can reduce your brew day to under 90 minutes for an all grain brew this way. You can't beat that doing extract brewing.

The inline mash is done starting with hot tap water of a strike temp of 130F, leaving a mash temp of about 120. The mash is then put on high heat with constant stirring until it reaches 145, then slow heated over about 15 minutes to 155. As it hits 155, any starch not yet converted converts very rapidly. Increase the time from 15 minutes up to 30 minutes and the result in my experimentation of several years ago is indistinguishable from an hour mash. I use this mash technique when I'm in a hurry. My induction hotplate is perfect for this. I've worked out exactly the correct setting to achieve the desired rate of temp rise. Stirring seems to enhance the rate of conversion, so it's not a "walk away" technique, but stirring frequently over a 15-30 minute time span is not a big ordeal. Combine this with no-boil / no-chill, and you can produce good beer in a shockingly short time span. The induction hot plate allows me to rapidly increase temp to 170 on my two gallon batches, and hold it for 15 minutes to get surprisingly good hop utilization without ever hitting a boil. Because the mash never reaches 180F, DMS doesn't get a chance to form, and at 170, whirlfloc seems to clarify fairly well.

H.W.

 

[Homercidal]

Interesting concept. I've done a few short brews with somewhat similar processes. They turned out pretty decent, however I haven't been consistent enough to form a precise process. I never thought about shortening the mash time in order to achieve a different sweetness/mouthfeel, but I dont' see how it can't work.

I imagine it depends a bit on the malt and the mash pH, but a 15 minute mash ought to leave some residuals behind.

I have a blueberry wheat that tastes like it might be overly attenuated. I planned to add some lactose at bottling, along with some natural blueberry flavoring (The blueberry flavor is basically nonexistent after secondary.) Maybe I'll try a test batch of the same thing with a short mash and see how it turns out. If I can get another quart of blueberries, that is.

 

[Cevan65]

If I'm in that much of a rush, I brew another day. I've found that mashing for 45 minutes gets me where I need to be. Going another 15 min gets me another percentage point in efficiency, a trade off I can live with.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Hmmmm...I recently switched to induction and might have to try this! I'm looking for a cheap on demand water heater to speed brew day without having to worry about what kind of crap is in my old tank heater. Eventually plan on RO into the on demand into the kettle with whatever mineral profile I want.