Cereal mash support?

Ruskin Brewery

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I don't know how big an ask this is, but what kind of support for cereal mashing could there be? I looked at the mash schedule options and it's not so detailed, so "cereal mash" and "main mash" tags are enough to be able to have a recipe printout that reflects the process.

I'm so glad to have found Brewers' Friend.
 
I don't know how big an ask this is, but what kind of support for cereal mashing could there be? I looked at the mash schedule options and it's not so detailed, so "cereal mash" and "main mash" tags are enough to be able to have a recipe printout that reflects the process.

I'm so glad to have found Brewers' Friend.

What kind of support would you like to see? Are you thinking, like a decoction, that adding the cereal mash to the main mash at a certain temperature would help raise the temperature?

Or something else? I'd love to hear what you think!
 
Cereal mash: Cook the cereal with some of the barley in water: The software would have to know how much cereal for its contribution to the mash, the barley is just a portion of what you're putting in anyway, and how much water is deducted from the total mash, less boil-off during cooking. Neither cereal nor barley affect the current grist calculations, the only factor is the water. If you take three quarts out of the main liquor volume, boil off one of them while cooking the cereal (a bit extreme), a quart of water would have to be added to the recipe total. That's the only real change from the current recipe builder I can see, how much water you lose doing the cereal mash. Some other effects: Barley taken out of the main mash reduces diastatic power. When recombining the cereal mash and the main mash the temperature of the cereal mash would be a factor in calculation unless you are adding the cereal mash at the same temperature as the main mash. Lots of factors.... But none of them insurmountable.
 
What kind of support would you like to see? Are you thinking, like a decoction, that adding the cereal mash to the main mash at a certain temperature would help raise the temperature?

Or something else? I'd love to hear what you think!

As Nosybear points out, the math isn't all that difficult, I have a spreadsheet to calculate temperatures for any two random mixtures of grain and water. I don't know modern programming methods but I can see where it might be a big job. Really, if I type in all of the ingredients and all of the water I get the numbers I need. But if I share a recipe with someone else it would be nice to be able to lay it out for them.

So between the no brainer and "Siri, make beer", it could mean
- allowing for two lists for fermentables, with "Cereal Mash" as one of the "Type" options under Mash Guidelines, and a space underneath each for details.
- allowing for two mashes to go with the two lists - making this nice so it only shows if you selected "Cereal Mash" above would be fancy. Not many brewers do this so why inflict an extra box on them. Just having spaces for water, temperature and comments would be great, even if there is not a lot of actual calculation.
- temperature calculations. I think we can skip that, or make it a separate tool llike the mash calculator, but generalize the inputs to calculate any combination of grain and water.

Or ultimately, someone who likes the challenge could design some kind of linked modules interface to allow the user to sequence any combination of rests and boils with 2 streams at any time. I'd offer to help with the heat balances but you don't need an engineering degree to figure that out. I'm good at proofreading math, though .
 

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