Thinner mash to avoid extracting tannins?

[CadiBrewer]

Please help me get my head around something. I regularly brew a small beer. I'm always surprised at how quickly my sparge runnings (fly sparge) drop below 1.010. I usually hit my numbers spot on after topping up in the kettle pre boil with about 2.5 gallons. But I hate babysitting the sparge and testing the runnings over and over again with my refractometer when I get close.

I was watching a podcast the other day with a guy from Wyeast brewing a small beer. He said that the brewer should babysit the runnings on a small beer so as to not extract tannins (I gave him an Amen out loud) but then he said that the brewer could also go with a thinner mash to avoid this situation. That's all he said. No details. I've been noodling on it for a few days, but I can't figure out in my mind how the thinner mash will allow you to collect more volume without extracting tannins. Can someone explain this to me?

 

[acidrain]

All I can suggest is that thinner mash = less sparge.

 

[Arrheinous]

People worry about tannin extraction but would you even notice if it was happening?

 

[RM-MN]

Tannin extraction requires two conditions, pH over 6 and temperature over 170. Control one of those and no tannins. When your runnings fall below 1.010 you may or may not have a high pH and it should be pretty easy to control the temperature. You also could just batch sparge and quit worrying about tannins.

 

[shelly_belly]

The thinner mash comment may have been a reference to a no sparge process.

 

[brewkinger]

My thoughts after reading it all:

Thinner mash = more water per pound of grain in the mash
Which means that your volume of first runnings is increased.

Which means that you have to fly sparge with less water to get to your pre boil volume.

I think that is what the podcaster was referring to.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[HopinJim]

Tannin extraction requires two conditions, pH over 6 and temperature over 170. Control one of those and no tannins. When your runnings fall below 1.010 you may or may not have a high pH and it should be pretty easy to control the temperature. You also could just batch sparge and quit worrying about tannins.

+1 on this...