Step Mashing issues

[Steve Russell]

I have a Grainfather G30 and did my first recipe yesterday my question is about the Mash In and Mash Out. The mash in seemed to be ok, temp up to 149 F, recirculation for 60 mins. This is where I was confused. My mash out temperature is 167, so it took the Grainfather about 7 minutes to get up to that temperature, then I had a 10 minute timer come on. The pump was running the whole time so I got an additional 17 mins of recirc over the grains. I read online that once it reaches temperature mash out is complete. So I am not sure if I did this right with my recipe as written or I need to amend it? , I added a 10 minute timer for mash out in the recipe. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you Steve

 

[Ward Chillington]

Relax don't worry..have a home brew. It's not gonna NOT make beer. Welcome to the learning process.

Longer mashing usually gets a more fermentable wort...90 minute mashes are common

 

[WesBrew]

sounds good. nothing to worry about. i don't do a timed mash out rest though but some might. i just start the sparge

 

[Donoroto]

Technically, once all the mash hits 170F the mash out is done, as all the enzymes are denatured. Longer times don't gain anything, but also don't hurt anything, at least not for 10 minutes. A couple hours might not be so good.

Like most brew appliances, hitting 170 might not necessarily mean the whole mash bed has reached it, so a couple extra minutes is fine.

Personally, I never mash out, because boil is just a couple minutes away, and the malt pipe (with all the grain) has been removed. I do sparge with 170F water though, a kind of mash out I guess.

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

I step mash every beer I brew. The second step is usually 158-160, mashout is at 168. The first step, which is the longest varies depending on the beer style. I set a timer for 15 minutes for the second two steps. I don’t keep them at the step for a set duration, rather I let the temperature rise and continue the starch conversion. The gravity of the wort increases slightly from the first step, which increases mash conversion efficiency. There are a lot of people out there that say it’s not necessary, but if you have the ability to do it, then do it to pick up a little more gravity. I’m convinced it makes for better beer. But that’s just my opinion.

 

[Steve Russell]

Relax don't worry..have a home brew. It's not gonna NOT make beer. Welcome to the learning process.

Longer mashing usually gets a more fermentable wort...90 minute mashes are common

Thank you for the insight and taking a deep breath...

 

[Steve Russell]

I step mash every beer I brew. The second step is usually 158-160, mashout is at 168. The first step, which is the longest varies depending on the beer style. I set a timer for 15 minutes for the second two steps. I don’t keep them at the step for a set duration, rather I let the temperature rise and continue the starch conversion. The gravity of the wort increases slightly from the first step, which increases mash conversion efficiency. There are a lot of people out there that say it’s not necessary, but if you have the ability to do it, then do it to pick up a little more gravity. I’m convinced it makes for better beer. But that’s just my opinion.

Thank you for the information, it sounds like it varies some but shouldn't hurt the wort!

 

[Steve Russell]

Technically, once all the mash hits 170F the mash out is done, as all the enzymes are denatured. Longer times don't gain anything, but also don't hurt anything, at least not for 10 minutes. A couple hours might not be so good.

Like most brew appliances, hitting 170 might not necessarily mean the whole mash bed has reached it, so a couple extra minutes is fine.

Personally, I never mash out, because boil is just a couple minutes away, and the malt pipe (with all the grain) has been removed. I do sparge with 170F water though, a kind of mash out I guess.

Thanks for the response, and yes I tried the mash out after watching videos, there seems to be pros and cons for both! Your analysis seems on point.

 

[Steve Russell]

sounds good. nothing to worry about. i don't do a timed mash out rest though but some might. i just start the sparge

Thank you for the response, still learning and worrying here..

 

[Minbari]

Technically, once all the mash hits 170F the mash out is done, as all the enzymes are denatured. Longer times don't gain anything, but also don't hurt anything, at least not for 10 minutes. A couple hours might not be so good.

Like most brew appliances, hitting 170 might not necessarily mean the whole mash bed has reached it, so a couple extra minutes is fine.

Personally, I never mash out, because boil is just a couple minutes away, and the malt pipe (with all the grain) has been removed. I do sparge with 170F water though, a kind of mash out I guess.

This is how I do it too. Since BIAB is what I do, it doesn't even move

 

[Bubba Wade]

Keep in mind that with today’s highly modified malts, step mashing may not be absolutely necessary. Depending on the malts and beer style, a simple one-step infusion mash may produce results that are indistinguishable from a step mash.

On the other hand, that’s why we brew our own beer. Playing mad scientist with wort is time well spent.

 

[Steve Russell]

I step mash every beer I brew. The second step is usually 158-160, mashout is at 168. The first step, which is the longest varies depending on the beer style. I set a timer for 15 minutes for the second two steps. I don’t keep them at the step for a set duration, rather I let the temperature rise and continue the starch conversion. The gravity of the wort increases slightly from the first step, which increases mash conversion efficiency. There are a lot of people out there that say it’s not necessary, but if you have the ability to do it, then do it to pick up a little more gravity. I’m convinced it makes for better beer. But that’s just my opinion.

Thanks for the response, I like your logic behind the step mashing!

 

[Steve Russell]

Keep in mind that with today’s highly modified malts, step mashing may not be absolutely necessary. Depending on the malts and beer style, a simple one-step infusion mash may produce results that are indistinguishable from a step mash.

On the other hand, that’s why we brew our own beer. Playing mad scientist with wort is time well spent.

Yes agreed, I had a grand time brewing and made some mistakes, but hoping for something drinkable..lol

 

[Dogwood]

I like your t shirt, it is a brewtiful day!!

 

[Mark Farrall]

Mash out is a really important step on very big brew systems, but not at normal homebrew sizes. Really large brew systems can take a while to transfer to the boil kettle. During that transfer the enzymes can keep breaking down the sugars to simpler sugars, giving you a drier and more fermentable beer. So if you want a repeatable process you bring the temperature up to a point where it kills all the enzymes and then transfer the beer. There's also some incidental benefits for sparging, as it can speed up the sparge a tiny amount and eek out a few more sugar molecules. But again that's probably only noticeable on big brew systems.

With BIAB mash out is even less important than for multi-vessel home brewers. Some of them can take quite a while with their sparging process and for them a mash out may make sense if they want to control the level of fermentability. For BIAB, once you've finished the mash, just set the temp controller to boil and you'll automatically go through the mash out process (i.e. killing the enzymes).

Step mashing before mash out can definitely be important, but it mainly depends on the malts you're using. When the grains are malted they also go through a mashing process. The highly modified malts will have had the equivalent of some of the lower temperature mash steps (break down of proteins and glucans). So for them you may not want to do the lower steps as it will break down the proteins even further and may effect your head formation and retention.

You can assume your malt is highly modified unless the maltster mentions that it isn't. All the macro breweries want highly modified malts so they can just do a single step infusion mash and the bigger maltsters are generally designing their malts for macro breweries.

And if you want even more information about mash steps than this, I listened to this podcast recently and found it very interesting - http://thebrulab.libsyn.com/episode...ivity-during-the-mash-w-dr-raimon-pars-viader. It's focused on shortening the time you mash, but it also goes through the reasons for most mash steps and how they help, or don't help, your mashing process.

 

[Steve Russell]

I like your t shirt, it is a brewtiful day!!

Yes I have a facebook group called It's a Brewtiful Life, and I wanted T shirts made for the 25 in the group and these were actually on Amazon already made at a cheap price.

 

[Steve Russell]

Mash out is a really important step on very big brew systems, but not at normal homebrew sizes. Really large brew systems can take a while to transfer to the boil kettle. During that transfer the enzymes can keep breaking down the sugars to simpler sugars, giving you a drier and more fermentable beer. So if you want a repeatable process you bring the temperature up to a point where it kills all the enzymes and then transfer the beer. There's also some incidental benefits for sparging, as it can speed up the sparge a tiny amount and eek out a few more sugar molecules. But again that's probably only noticeable on big brew systems.

With BIAB mash out is even less important than for multi-vessel home brewers. Some of them can take quite a while with their sparging process and for them a mash out may make sense if they want to control the level of fermentability. For BIAB, once you've finished the mash, just set the temp controller to boil and you'll automatically go through the mash out process (i.e. killing the enzymes).

Step mashing before mash out can definitely be important, but it mainly depends on the malts you're using. When the grains are malted they also go through a mashing process. The highly modified malts will have had the equivalent of some of the lower temperature mash steps (break down of proteins and glucans). So for them you may not want to do the lower steps as it will break down the proteins even further and may effect your head formation and retention.

You can assume your malt is highly modified unless the maltster mentions that it isn't. All the macro breweries want highly modified malts so they can just do a single step infusion mash and the bigger maltsters are generally designing their malts for macro breweries.

And if you want even more information about mash steps than this, I listened to this podcast recently and found it very interesting - http://thebrulab.libsyn.com/episode...ivity-during-the-mash-w-dr-raimon-pars-viader. It's focused on shortening the time you mash, but it also goes through the reasons for most mash steps and how they help, or don't help, your mashing process.

Thanks for the detailed response, I guess the whole process for me was based on the recipe which said Mash in for 60 minutes and Mash out for 10. I see this process on a lot of recipes so I assumed it was the norm. I can see now even in all grain brewing it is not really necessary especially if you are following with a sparge.

 

[Steve Russell]

It seems my first attempt at all grain may be not so good. I pitched my yeast at too high of a temperature and either I killed the yeast or really slowed it down. After 3 days I had no action that I could see in my airlock, I have a SS Brewtech Brew Bucket so the only real indication you have is the airlock. I checked gravity after 4 days, the OG was 1.042 and when I checked it after 4 days it was 1.035 so I assumed the yeast may have been working but not very aggressively. I decided to peek in the top today and did see some foam on top of the wort but not a lot. I pitched the yeast at 74 F, which according to the yeast directions was a bit high. That temp was the outside of the fermenter and I was told there is a good chance the wort was probably much higher in temp in the middle so I may have killed the yeast. I am going to let it runs its course, next Friday will be two weeks. I know have a temperature controller so my next batch will go in my extra kegerator and use the controller with a heat band to control temperature. Lessons learned!

 

[Donoroto]

I have a SS Brewtech Brew Bucket so the only real indication you have is the airlock.

It's also possible that there's a small leak somewhere, the CO2 is getting out some way that doesn't include the airlock.

 

[Steve Russell]

Yes you may be right I was going to spray Star San around the bottom of the lid to see if there was a leak, but havent done that yet.