What's the point of a mash out?

[BrewDrinkRepeat]

I go back and forth on the mash-out... IMO there's no downside other than the extra time it takes, and with a direct-fired mash tun (in my case, an Anvil Foundry) it's completely effortless to do.

Does it actually do anything important? Probably not, at least not the way I brew these days. (And I've always questioned if this is just another one of those things that homebrewers have long done "because the pros do it", but we don't really have to at this scale.)

I do a recirculated no-sparge / BIAB-ish mash, and even though a mash-out is only 15-20º higher than mash temp I figure it might make the wort drain out of the mash just a little bit easier... maybe. I dunno.

In the end, if I'm not pressed for time I usually do it, but if I'm trying to get through the session as quickly as possible I don't and I don't worry about it, either.

 

[cmac62]

Mashing out reliably gives me an extra 4 gravity points.

Interesting, had not heard this. I guess this is related to quote #3.

Maillard

Thanks Jay, damn spelling.

Raising the mash to a mash-out temp decreases the viscosity of the wort and makes it easier to extract the sugars into the kettle. Many homebrewers don’t mash-out for one reason or another. Unless you’ve mashed to provide a wort high in dextrins, the mash-out can be skipped. The mash-out can increase your efficiency but to a much lesser degree than your choice of lauter and sparge.

Thanks Mickey, I don't recall if I've heard that the mash out thins the mash and makes the sparge more effective.

Edit: This is my first thread that made it to 2 pages. Woo hoo. LOL

 

[Transamguy77]

I personally have not seen the benefits of a mash out, I understand the science behind it and I have done several brews with and without and I don’t notice a difference.

Now as long as I have brewed AG I always did a sparge, a dunk sparge with BIAB and Fly sparge with my 3 tier set up and tried batch sparging once. I get the best results with a fly sparge and I actually find it easier. I also sparge with 190+ temp water and I know people will say “you’ll extract tannins!” Well I don’t and even though the water in my HLT is that hot my grain bed is not. After sparging a keggle mash tun with water that hot I’m lucky if my last runnings for a 10 gallon batch are 170, the amount of dilution keeps the water from getting that much hotter.

I feel that there are a lot of systems and a lot of different ways to brew out there so just because 1 person has something happen one way doesn’t mean you’ll have the same results on your system doing it your way.

 

[cmac62]

I personally have not seen the benefits of a mash out, I understand the science behind it and I have done several brews with and without and I don’t notice a difference.

Me either. especially if you put the heat to the BK once you get 2-3 gals in there.

 

[day_trippr]

One would have to do the analysis to see if there was any "difference" batch to batch mash-out or not, sensory appreciation notwithstanding.

Anyway, at a quart per minute it takes roughly 8 minutes to "get 2 gals in there".
It will be another 48 minutes before the last quart of the run-off hits the boil kettle for a 14 gallon pre-boil volume.
That's almost as long as the mash duration, and many folks seem to think the mash duration is important...

Cheers!

 

[Transamguy77]

I think this is going to be one of those practices that have different effects with different people and different systems but for me i don't see a difference.