Opinions re cold extract?

[mashdar]

Hi all! I was hoping for some input regarding cold extract process/recipes. I have read a bunch of articles which sound very promising, but forum posts with tasting notes generally don't sound too great.

Things I'm thinking about:
1. General thoughts? Pros/cons vs partigyle/high temp mash/small grain bill?
2. Extract temperature, time, and recirc. I'd much rather do a 2 hour recirc at 65F than figure out a way to do a 40F soak overnight. Articles are very wishy washy regarding process requirements here.
3. Should there be a starch precip rest before heating? Seems like that could help a lot.
4. Mash oatmeal, crystals, etc at normal mash temp rest? Seems like this would help round out the character while using cold base extract for amy and background character. Oatmeal for some B glucans, which aparently are not very soluable in cold extract. Might need some serious rice hulls. Or maybe a thick 180F extract added to base cold extract for amy rest. (Thinking out loud.)

Personally I'm looking for 2-3% abv but don't care about calories. This seems like a neat tool to add to the arsenal, but I'm debating where to start.

 

[Alan Reginato]

Hi!

1- and 3-
Low Enzymatic/Cold Mash/Low alcohol beer
Some brewers had problems with particles, when didn't use Biab bags. So a starch precip rest should help.
2-Cold Extraction of Malt Components and Their Use in Brewing Applications - Brewing With Briess
The temp, just has to be below first rest temp. I think it's acid rest, at 100F: https://grainfather.com/step-mashing-what-is-it-and-why-do-it-2/
But you have to do a normal mash rest, after separate wort from grains.
According to briess guys, 1 hour with recirculation should be enough.

4- crystal has few to none starch, should be used in the cold mash. Oatmeal, I don't know. I would suggest in the hot mash.


If you don't care too much about calories, a higher hot mash should be fine.
Best Practices – Low alcohol beer | Lallemand Brewing

Hop that helps, if you try something like this, please share with us. I'm looking into low abv beers too!

 

[mashdar]

Hi!

1- and 3-
Low Enzymatic/Cold Mash/Low alcohol beer
Some brewers had problems with particles, when didn't use Biab bags. So a starch precip rest should help.
2-Cold Extraction of Malt Components and Their Use in Brewing Applications - Brewing With Briess
The temp, just has to be below first rest temp. I think it's acid rest, at 100F: https://grainfather.com/step-mashing-what-is-it-and-why-do-it-2/
But you have to do a normal mash rest, after separate wort from grains.
According to briess guys, 1 hour with recirculation should be enough.

4- crystal has few to none starch, should be used in the cold mash. Oatmeal, I don't know. I would suggest in the hot mash.


If you don't care too much about calories, a higher hot mash should be fine.
Best Practices – Low alcohol beer | Lallemand Brewing

Hop that helps, if you try something like this, please share with us. I'm looking into low abv beers too!

My thought with the crystal at normal mash temps was that there's no fermentables to worry about. (edit: looks like I'm wrong, and crystal is fairly fermentable? but if preconverted, soak temperature probably doesn't matter) It can't hurt in case there are temperature-sensitive flavor extracts to be had?

My impression re low temp base malt extract is that amy and flavor compounds are still highly soluble, but the starch is quite insoluble. B gucans are apparently also pretty unavailble at low extract temps, hence the oatmeal idea. (Several articles recommend oats or rye for this reason.)

My biggest concern with high dextrin (high mash temp) beer is possible gut flora interactions. I don't want to make my guests gassy!

I'll take a stab and report back in a few months. I do long primaries and bottle conditioning, so very slow turn around.

 

[Alan Reginato]

My thought with the crystal at normal mash temps was that there's no fermentables to worry about. (edit: looks like I'm wrong, and crystal is fairly fermentable? but if preconverted, soak temperature probably doesn't matter) It can't hurt in case there are temperature-sensitive flavor extracts to be had

Yes, they've fermentables, but they're already converted. So all should go with cold mash. A hot mash doesn't hurt in this case and can extract more flavour, I guess.

My impression re low temp base malt extract is that amy and flavor compounds are still highly soluble, but the starch is quite insoluble. B gucans are apparently also pretty unavailble at low extract temps, hence the oatmeal idea. (Several articles recommend oats or rye for this reason.)

Yes, I read that too. Makes sense.

My biggest concern with high dextrin (high mash temp) beer is possible gut flora interactions. I don't want to make my guests gassy!

Oh, that's a problem! I like dry beers, they are more "digestible" (quoting someone else). Beers with too much carbs could be cloying.

I will brew one too, but at end of this year, probably.

Cheers!

 

[mashdar]

I finally got around to brewing last night. A starch precipitation rest of ~1 hour certainly dropped some starchy sludge out. Definitely worth it.

While my intent was to brew a stout, I decided to do a brown instead, using the same recipe as my previous batch, with added oats.

Steps:

• 8lbs MO cold extracted at 54F for 2 hours with ~0.5gpm recirc.
• Then added boiling water to full volume (7gal preboil), which resulted in 150F. Heated to 158F.
• 1lb quick oats, 4 oz each Special B, Chocolate, Roasted Barley mashed in hop spider with recirc into spider, 30 minutes.
• normal boil etc, 1500W element took a while to get to boil.

Final volume 5.9gal, OG 1.014. Not super low, but about what I wanted. Curious to see where FG goes.

Should be interesting to compare directly with the 4.7% ABV version.