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So You Wanna Mash...
This is the online version of Dan Listermann's famous "first-timer's guide to all-grain brewing.
Taking the Fear out of Mashing
What you'll need
Grist
The Process
Mash Tuns
Lauter Tuns
Sparging
Mashing Systems
Boiling Capacity
Taking the Fear out of Mashing
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 If you've already begun brewing with malt
extract kits, you know that extract brewing is pretty simple. All-grain brewing
sounds much more complicated and time consuming, so why bother?
There are two very good reasons:
Mashing, or all-grain brewing, is less
expensive than extract brewing; usually much less, after a modest investment
for some equipment.
It also gives you almost total control
over the finished product. You produce precisely the kind of beer you want,
instead of depending on the ingredients and processes used by a kit
manufacturer.
So why don't more homebrewers mash? We
think it's because many of the available books on the subject are too technical
for a novice.
We prefer the "Relax, don't worry"
approach. All-grain brewing is like any other industrial process;
you can study
for years and still not know everything about it, but you can follow some
simple instructions at home and achieve basically the same result as big
commercial breweries.
This booklet contains all you need to
know to begin mashing, saving money, and making better beers.
Don't be concerned about step mashing,
decoctions, or complicated procedures and fussy temperature and chemical
adjustments.
Those procedures were necessary years
ago, due mainly to the limited availability of top quality brewing malts.
Today, with fully modified two-row malts
readily available through homebrew supply dealers, you can use the simplest
procedures with complete confidence.
The method used by most all-grain
homebrewers today is the time-honored English method called single infusion.
You just mix the grist (ground malt) with hot water. After mixing, leave it
alone for an hour or so to let the natural enzymes in the grain convert the
starches to sugars.
The only technical aspects are taking the
temperature of the mash, a simple test for starch conversion (and even that's
optional), and rinsing the sugars from the spent grain. The equipment and
procedures are also relatively simple.
No other techniques are necessary for
most homebrewers, but once you feel comfortable with a single infusion mash,
even the more complicated techniques will be well within your reach.
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What you'll need:
Batch size: 5 (U.S.) gallons (19 litres).
Experience:
Equipment:
Supplies:
Tincture of iodine (first aid section of a drug store or chemist)
Ingredients:
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Brewing water (9 or 10 gallons) (34-38 litres)
Well modified 2-row barley malt, ground to
crush the grain while
leaving the husks mostly intact (about 10 pounds) (4.5 kilograms). Typical
malts are Klages, Harrington, English or Belgian 2-row, Pale Ale, and similar
"base" malts.
Other adjunct grains as desired (according
to your recipe) such as
crystal, chocolate, roasted barley, etc.
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Grist
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Grist is the brewer's term for crushed
malted barley.
The malt should be
crushed to the point that almost all the grains are broken, but not so much
that the outer husks are ground to powder or the insides ground to flour. It's
better to lose a little efficiency with a coarse grist than to risk a stuck
sparge from too much flour in the grist ("stuck" means the straining equipment
becomes clogged).
Most homebrewers will eventually buy a
mill of some kind. It can pay for itself
very quickly and can be easily motorized with an electric drill.
The South
American ("Corona") corn mill is cheapest, but difficult to adjust, impossible
to keep in adjustment, and less efficient than roller mills.
Several more
suitable mills are now available, and we encourage you to check them out at
better homebrew supply stores.
The
PhilMill is a perfect example.
A beginner might take advantage of the
fact that many suppliers will mill the
grain for a nominal charge, using a roller mill to produce a superior grist.
Try to avoid the bagged, pre-crushed grain
often seen in stores. Once milled,
the grist can go stale, and is open to infection. It's also impossible to tell
how old it is, or how well modified.
Dark malts, such as black patent,
chocolate, or roasted barley, don't require
mashing, so are best lightly cracked and added to the mash just before
sparging.
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The Process
Striking
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Striking is mixing the grist with hot
water. The hot water dissolves the
starches in the grist and activates the enzymes that will convert the starches
into sugars. By controlling the temperature, different effects are possible.
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Here's the simple procedure:
Heat about 3 gallons (11 litres) of water to 170 °F (77 °C).
Ladle a pan of water into the mash tun.
Use the other pan to add some
grist. Alternate pans of water and grist, stirring between additions. Try to
maintain a porridge-like consistency by adding extra grist or water as needed.
It's usually better to have a thin, watery mash mixture than an overly thick,
dry mash.
Check the temperature of the mash. It
should be within a few
(plus or minus) of 150 °F (66 °C). Add hot or cold water as
necessary to bring the mash as close as possible to this range.
Close the mash tun to hold as much heat as
possible.
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Starch Conversion -- The Iodine Test
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After about 30 to 45 minutes, most of the
starches in the grain have been converted into sugars. Leftover starches can
cause a hazy appearance in the beer, but a simple test can tell you when all
(or nearly all) the starches have been converted.
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Stir the mash with the spoon, then let a
few drops of the liquid (but no solid particles) fall from the spoon onto the white saucer.
Add a drop or two of iodine to the wort in
the saucer.
If the iodine quickly turns black or dark
blue, there is still some
unconverted starch in the mash. Wait ten minutes, then try the test again.
If the iodine remains about the same
orange/brown color it was, no
starch is present in your sample. Now the next step, lautering, can begin.
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Caution: Never return the
contents of the saucer to the mash, as it has been contaminated by the iodine.
Wipe the saucer clean immediately.
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Lautering & Sparging:
Lautering
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Lautering is the process that separates
the newly converted sugars in the grain from the husks and other solids.
Ladle the mash from the mash tun into a
separate vessel (the lauter tun) equipped with a false bottom. Allow the mash
to settle for about ten minutes.
Lautering has two phases:
vorlaufing, which removes most of the
grain
particles from the sweet wort and lets the husks form a natural filter bed over
the false bottom; and
sparging, where the hot water is sprayed
on the grain while the sweet wort is drained from beneath the false bottom.
1. Heat the sparge water. Up to 5 gallons
(20 litres) should be heated to between 170 and 180 °F (77 to 82 °C).
2. Start the vorlauf operation by opening
the drain of the lauter tun, and
slowly fill a pan. At first it may be cloudy and full of grain particles. When
the pan is full, stop the flow and very gently return the wort to the top of
the mash. Repeat this cycle until few particles are found in the wort and the
cloudiness begins to diminish.
3. Begin to drain the wort slowly into the
boiling pot. When the liquid level
of the mash falls to just above the top of the grain bed, the sparging
operation may begin. Allow at least 30 minutes for sparging.
4. Sparging consists of applying hot water
to the mash to replace the wort
that drains out of the lauter tun. This dissolves and rinses the sugars from
the spent grain. Even distribution of the sparge water is the key to efficient
sparging. This can be accomplished best by gently sprinkling the hot water
evenly over the mash.
5. Sparging ends when the sparge water
runs out or the pot is filled to its
safe boiling point. Never squeeze, press, or wring out the spent grains. There
is no need, since almost all of the sugar is gone and undesirable flavors can
come from the husks.
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Boiling:
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Boiling and the rest of the process can now proceed just as with any extract
brew. You have successfully duplicated the process used by every major brewery
in the world, you have given yourself (rather than an extract manufacturer)
total control over the recipe formulation, and you've also saved quite a bit of
money!
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Mash Tuns
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The mash tun is a vessel that contains the grist/water mixture (the mash).
Generally, it should be at least large enough to hold the mash, assuming 2.5
pounds of grain per gallon (2 kilograms of grain per 7 litres of capacity). A
standard 5 gallon bucket should hold a mash containing up to 12.5 pounds (5.75
kg) of grain. It should also be well insulated, or capable of being insulated.
A common picnic cooler is just about
ideal; it's very well insulated, generally
large enough, and easy to clean. The round variety often seen at construction
sites is particularly well suited to this purpose.
Any simple plastic bucket can be insulated
with a blanket or sleeping bag. The
temperature loss during the conversion time won't be enough to seriously affect
the outcome.
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Lauter Tuns
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A lauter tun is the one piece of equipment that extract brewers may not already
have on hand. It can be thought of as a strainer used to separate the sweet
wort from the mash. Four kinds are used in homebrewing:
The grain bag is literally a bag that fits
inside a bucket or cooler. The
bucket should have some sort of drain. The sides of the bag are made from
canvas or nylon. The bottom is a screen or mesh. Its major drawback is a
tendency for some of the sparge water to bypass the grist, seeping between the
grain bed and the bag, or between the bag and the walls of the bucket, thereby
reducing efficiency.
The double bucket system consists of two
nested 5-gallon plastic buckets.
The upper bucket's bottom has a great many drilled holes, and the lower bucket
has a drain. This system needs a lot of foundation water (a gallon or so) to
submerge the bottom of the upper bucket, in order to prevent a stuck
(undrainable) mash. That can be a significant drag on efficiency. Also, the
level of liquid in the upper bucket must never rise above the top of the lower
one, or it will overflow. Capacity is limited to less than about 10 pounds (4.5
kg) of grist. On the other hand, it has the advantage of being made at home
with common materials and tools.
The manifold system is usually made from
soft copper tubing wound into a
coil that fits inside a bucket or cooler. The coil is drilled with many small
holes or slotted with a hacksaw. One end is closed by crimping or capping. The
other end is fitted to a hose leading through a hole in the bucket.
A T-shaped
manifold can also be used, with plastic pipe substituted for copper. The size
and length of the tube limit the drain area. That can lead to slow or stuck
mashes. Solids can collect near the drain, severely limiting the flow. Cleaning
the tube presents problems, because drill or saw burrs retain solids that can
harbor bacteria.
The best system mimics the equipment used
in commercial brewing. This is a
false bottom made of a drilled or slotted plate, supported just above the floor
of the vessel. Many drain holes are spaced over a wide area. There are no
constrictions and it's easily cleaned. Since the false bottom is only a
fraction of an inch above the real bottom, little or no foundation water is
needed, allowing you to utilize all the sparge water.
Phil's Lauter Tun and
Phil's Mini Lauter Tun are examples of this type.The Sparger
Sparging can be as simple as hand ladling the hot sparge water onto the mash,
or as sophisticated as a rotating sparge arm fed by an elevated sparge water
bucket. The only difference is convenience and efficiency.
Ideally, the sparge water should be
applied so the liquid level is just under
the surface of the grist. This lets the water support the grain bed without
pressing it down, and assures that channeling is minimized. The flow should be
evenly distributed at a uniform speed. Unfortunately, this is difficult to
control, so it's better to keep the mash slightly covered with water.
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Sparging
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Try not to rush sparging. In a typical
homebrewer's setup, 5 gallons of sparge
water should last 30 to 40 minutes; otherwise efficiency suffers. You want the
residual sugars in the grain to dissolve in the fresh hot water before draining
out of the lauter tun.
All sparging methods (except the first)
require a bucket with a drain to hold
the sparge water before it enters the lauter tun. Five methods are commonly
used:
Hand ladling is certainly inexpensive, but
very labor intensive. Wherever
the water is poured, it tends to bore channels into the mash. These channels
form an easy path for the water to bypass much of the mash, so efficiency
suffers.
The open drain method requires a sparge
bucket fitted with a drain. It's
filled, usually by ladling, from the brew kettle which is later used to boil
the wort. The sparge bucket is elevated so the drain hangs over the center of
the mash. You repeatedly open and close the drain, keeping the mash flooded as
the sweet wort is drawn off. The falling water can bore channels in the mash,
hurting efficiency just as with hand ladling, although a saucer or shallow dish
resting at the top of the mash can limit this problem.
Attaching a hose with a sprinkling head
(the watering can variety) to the
sparge bucket can eliminate most of the problems associated with one stream of
water. The mash still requires flooding unless you continuously move the head
about. The holes in a typical sprinkling head are usually too large, so the
drain needs to be turned on and off frequently or the flood gets too deep.
A stationary sparge manifold can be
constructed by coiling soft copper
tubing with holes in its underside over the area of the mash. One end is capped
and the other is attached to the sparge bucket hose. This will produce many
fine sprays over a large area, but the spray will be strong at the start and
weaker at the capped end. Unless the mash is flooded, each spray will bore a
small channel into the mash and efficiency will suffer somewhat.
Commercial brewers use a rotating sparge
arm that is drilled with tiny
holes. The rotating action carries each hole over a large area. If the spray
travels in the opposite direction of the arm's rotation, the spray forms many
rain-like droplets which cannot bore channels in the mash. The liquid level can
then be held at the surface of the mash to maximize efficiency. Think of it as
a specialized lawn sprinkler. See Phil's Sparger for an example of
this system on a homebrewer's scale.
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Mashing Systems
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There are three mash methods: infusion, step mashing, and decoction. There are
several variations of each. Only the basics for each method will be discussed
here.
Single infusion mashing is the
method outlined in this brochure. The mash
is performed in a well-insulated vessel, such as a picnic cooler. Then, after
starch conversion, it's transferred to a lauter tun, waiting 10 minutes for
settling before vorlaufing.
Step mashing is used for
incompletely modified lager malts. The mash must
be heated to certain temperatures and allowed to rest at each before being
heated to the next. The mashing is normally conducted in a pot on a stove. The
primary challenges are stirring (to prevent scorching during heating) and
accurate temperature determination.
Decoction mashing is the same as
step mashing except that instead of
directly heating the mash, a portion of it is withdrawn,, boiled, and infused
back into the mash. It was developed before the invention of the thermometer,
and is not recommended for beginners.
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Boiling Capacity
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Maximum efficiency in sparging usually requires that the sparge water equal the
batch size (i.e., 5 gallons of sparge water for a 5 gallon (19 litre) batch).
This will produce about 6 1/2 gallons of wort. A gallon will evaporate during
the hour-long boil and a half gallon of trub is usually left at the bottom of
the kettle.
For a number of reasons it is always best
to boil the full batch. For a five
gallon batch an eight gallon (32 quart/30 litre) pot is recommended. Sometimes
boiling capacity is limited, but don't look at that as an impediment to
mashing.
A number of alternatives are available.
Boil the first half of the batch
separately from the second and recombine
in the fermenter.
Sparge only what can safely be boiled (the
first 3 gallons of wort contain
about 2/3 of the sugar) and either make a smaller batch or reinforce the batch
with malt extract.
Mash about 50% more grain than the recipe
calls for, sparge about three
gallons, boil, and cut the batch with boiled and cooled water added to the
fermenter to make up the five gallons.
If you're currently a small-capacity
extract brewer, try any one of these
methods once and you should quickly develop the confidence to invest in a
larger brewing capacity.
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There you have it -- a simple introduction to mashing! Follow the procedures
outlined in this document and we predict you'll quickly become an advanced
all-grain brewer who makes better beer, saves money and has more fun doing
it.
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