Partigyle reiterated mash idea

[anotherbeerplease]

Just want a sanity check on this one:

First mash is 20(ish) pounds of light colored malts, high gravity first runnings are used as strike water for second mash. Second runnings used to create an Oberon style summer ale.

Second mash. First runnings used as strike water. Malts will be primarily dark and speciality malts, when combined with first runnings will create a strong dark winter beer.

Both mashes are sparged, no sugars are wasted; it's like getting 5 gallons worth of free summer ale when also brewing a badass winter sipper. Unless I am missing something??

 

[jtratcliff]

If your 1st runnings from mash #1 are used as strike for mash #2 , don't you run the risk of saturating the sugars in the 2nd mash and leaving a lot behind?

Why not do 2 separate mashes with fresh water and combine the runnings? What is to be gained from mashing with liquor already full of sugar?

If there's a reason educate me, as I really don't know... but at first glance, it seems counter productive to efficient extraction...

 

[doug293cz]

You'd need to do three or more iterated mashes to saturate the wort with maltose (and other sugars.) At mash temps saturation for maltose is 66.7˚P (or 66.7% by weight of maltose.) You will leave more sugar per pound of grain in the grain bed with higher SG wort, but you will have less grain so total retained sugar may be less (lauter efficiency higher.) You can iterate thinner mashes to get better conversion, and improve your overall efficiency. Need to run some simulations on this, but will take some time to set up the simulator.

You can get higher pre-boil wort SG's with the iterated mash technique than you can with a single mash. Think about what it would take to get a pre-boil SG of 1.150 with a single mash, and then with a two step iterated mash.

Brew on

 

[anotherbeerplease]

Ok thanks for info. I have been reading a bunch about this. One of the reasons for the reiterated mash is my 10gal mash tun will not fit the 24lbs of grain called for in my recipe.

Now I am doing an 6.5%abv Oktoberfest lager w the first mash, and using some of that wort as strike water for mash 2. Mash 2 is a Russian Imperial Stout which should come in around 13%abv.

Basically I am using the extra space I would have had during the Oktoberfest mash to hold the extra grains from the RIS.