100% Malt AG Mash

[bbqzookeeper]

So I've got tonnes of grain (0.2. to be exact) and want to have a go doing some AG mashes properly.

I have a HERMS setup that is using a keg (w/ false bottom), a high temp pump and an urn (w/ copper coil) being controlled by an Auber PID.

Apart from the Hardware side of things, he's what I'm thinking of doing:

1. Fill up 45L of water and adjust pH to around 5.5 (using citric acid and testing with meter).
2. Grind 8kg of grain as fine as possible, to expose as much of the starch/flour as possible.
3. Stir it all together until well mixed and then get started with the Mashing.
4. Heat up to 40°C and sit for 30 mins, stirring every 15mins.
5. Heat up to 50°C and sit for 30 mins, stirring every 15mins.
6. Heat up to 62°C and sit for 90 mins, stirring every 15mins.
7. Heat up to 71°C and sit for 45 mins, stirring every 15mins.
8. Drain out and sparge the grain bed with about a 1 or 2L of very warm water.
9. Cool with Immersion coil and pitch yeast.

I have a infra-red thermometer to double check accuracy of PID / it's really cool to use!
Biggest questions are:

Is this a good amount of grain to water - what's the recommended mix if it's all malted?
(Homedistiller website suggested 4kg to 18L - wasn't quite sure what people have had success with).

And is the Alpha rest worth it?

Thanks!

[bbqzookeeper]

ENZYME..........REST TEMPERATURE Celsius
Beta Glucanase......40' to 45'
Potease................50' to 54
Beta Amylase.........62' to 67'
Alpha Amylase........71' to 72'

These are not all the enzymes but they are the ones you need to worry about. That first step is to break down gluten so as to not have a gooy mash but a lot skip this one (not me), the amount of time needed for the rest between steps can vary depending on the grain or the grist but basically 30 min is pretty safe, maybe 45 for the B Amylase rest. Some will say the last rest is better left out so as not to denature the Beta Amylase as the AA will still work slowly through out the ferment even though the optimum activation temp was not achieved. I don't go a long with this unless you are having a problem controlling temps as that rest should been complete before stepping the your final rest. going over 72' will denature the Alpha Amylase, this is called mashing out and not something you want to do for whiskey mash

RECIPE/GRAIN BILL

The first point to cover which is a common misconception when determining your grain bill...people often think that a grain bill of say 70% corn means 70% of the grains by weight should be corn. For example, 10kg of grain with a 70% corn bill should be 7kg of corn...this is incorrect.

Different grains supply varying amounts of fermentable sugars to the mash, and these need to be calculated to accurately determine your grain bill. I have also seen varying values for percentage yield of various grains and it obviously depends on the quality of the grain itself, but some common figures are 70% for corn, and 50% for malted barley and wheat.

This is how I come to a grain bill...there’s only 2 guides i’ve ever been able to base off for amount of sugars in a wash. One is to use 5kg of sugar to a 30L wash for any sugar recipe, the other is to use about 8kg of grain for a 30L wash in an all grain recipe. The second rule however comes from Scotch Whisky recipes, and seeing as barley gives less sugars than corn, I figured that would be inaccurate for a bourbon wash.

And THIS from Home Distiller website, showing different values for yield percentages than Brendan:

Sugar: 100%
Corn: 84%
Lager Malt: 80%
Rye Malt: 63%

etc...

^ All of this is the information that is guiding my working out. ^

By Brendan's method, say I wanted 6.67kg of Sugar in a 40L wash.

The whole lot of it is from Malt, so 100% (from) Barley = 6.67kg sugars.

Barley: 6.67kg sugars @ 80% sugar by weight = 8.3375kg of barley

Anyone with specific know-how on this? Double check it out?

Thanks!

-bbqzookeeper

[TheMechwarrior]

All I can say is 64oC for 90minutes is all you need. Keep it simple.

[sp0rk]

So I've got tonnes of grain (0.2. to be exact) and want to have a go doing some AG mashes properly.

I have a HERMS setup that is using a keg (w/ false bottom), a high temp pump and an urn (w/ copper coil) being controlled by an Auber PID.

Apart from the Hardware side of things, he's what I'm thinking of doing:

1. Fill up 45L of water and adjust pH to around 5.5 (using citric acid and testing with meter).
2. Grind 8kg of grain as fine as possible, to expose as much of the starch/flour as possible.
3. Stir it all together until well mixed and then get started with the Mashing.
4. Heat up to 40°C and sit for 30 mins, stirring every 15mins.
5. Heat up to 50°C and sit for 30 mins, stirring every 15mins.
6. Heat up to 62°C and sit for 90 mins, stirring every 15mins.
7. Heat up to 71°C and sit for 45 mins, stirring every 15mins.
8. Drain out and sparge the grain bed with about a 1 or 2L of very warm water.
9. Cool with Immersion coil and pitch yeast.

I have a infra-red thermometer to double check accuracy of PID / it's really cool to use!
Biggest questions are:

Is this a good amount of grain to water - what's the recommended mix if it's all malted?
(Homedistiller website suggested 4kg to 18L - wasn't quite sure what people have had success with).

And is the Alpha rest worth it?

Thanks!

Don't grind as fine as possible, that's only good for BIAB (as the bag keeps all the husks in)
Otherwise you're likely not to get a good grain bed happening, just crack the grain open so the starch is exposed
Your infra red thermo is useless here, it's only reading the surface temp, not the actual liquid temp
Personally I wouldn't bother with the 40C rest, but that's your choice
I'd mash in at 54C and rest there for 15 minutes
Ramp to 64C and mash for 90 minutes
Then ramp to 72C for 10 minutes (this is optional really)
Finally up to 78C for 10 minutes for a mash out, recirculating to clear your wash

The other thing you need to take into account is that you won't get 100% efficiency on your conversion of sugars
With my BIAB setup I usually get around 75% efficiency (though I've gotten 83-85% with Weyermann Boh Pils malt a few times) so to hit my 8% ABV in a 23L wash, I'd need 7.9kg of malt at 75% efficiency
I've heard of people getting 90%+ efficiency on their HERMs systems, but they've most likely been brewing on them for a long time and have really dialled them in

[OzKev]

1. Fill up 45L of water and adjust pH to around 5.5 (using citric acid and testing with meter).
Mash in let it stabilise for 5-10mins then check pH and do any acid adjustments. The malt will change the pH so if you adjust the water first you will end up too acid (low pH).

2. Grind 8kg of grain as fine as possible, to expose as much of the starch/flour as possible.
If you are using a false bottom it will set like concrete and not flow. You just want to crack open each husk exposing the startch, but leaving intact as much as possible the husk to work as the grain bed. 0.9mm to 1.2mm crush is a typical range for size. Refer attached pic for my crush, which is on the finer side

3. Stir it all together until well mixed and then get started with the Mashing.
4. Heat up to 40°C and sit for 30 mins, stirring every 15mins.
5. Heat up to 50°C and sit for 30 mins, stirring every 15mins.
6. Heat up to 62°C and sit for 90 mins, stirring every 15mins.
7. Heat up to 71°C and sit for 45 mins, stirring every 15mins.
I'm with TheMechwarrior, keep it as simple as possible. In beer making you want to look at multiple steps depending on the style from acid, glucose, protein rest and mashout (78c). With a mash wash do not mash out, you want to leave the enzymes active so they can break down the sugars more. So a straight mash at 63c-64c is great. What I tend to do is start at 66c so some of the Beta amylase enzymes can get active and help break up the starch chains without denaturing the Alpha amylase, this just gets the conversion moving along faster initially. Then I allow it to drop to 63c so the Alpha amylase can finish up attaching all the nodes.

8. Drain out and sparge the grain bed with about a 1 or 2L of very warm water.
The warm water should not exceed 66c so you don't denature the Alpha amylase. Technically a couple more degrees c is ok, but this is just playing it safe.

9. Cool with Immersion coil and pitch yeast.
Yep


Pic of my crush, which is on the finer side for using with a false bottom

[bbqzookeeper]

Cool on the grinding of the grain, I must of misread somewhere and just equated fine-ness with efficiency, to the detriment of running the mash at all. Good to know.

Also thanks for the pH suggestion, using the infra-red thermo and not mashing out, will do so that way.

Time to get mashing I think. :smile:

[OzKev]

In my post
Then I allow it to drop to 63c so the Alpha amylase can finish up attaching all the nodes.
should had read
Then I allow it to drop to 63c so the Beta amylase can finish up attacking all the nodes.

2 typos in 1 sentence :teasing-tease:

Actually all the way through I have written the Alpha and Beta amylase backwards. :violence-smack: Alpha likes the hotter temps, and Beta likes the colder temps.

[bbqzookeeper]

Yeah, I figured that, OzKev. Was no issue since I knew what you meant. Have read sooo much on this stuff, you look a little fanatical just talking about it to the muggles of the brewing world.

So put on a batch, ended up doing about 9kgs and then filling up the keg with water.
It ramps up quite slowly so I just rested it something superficially like 5 mins @ 40°C and 50°C.
Did 62°C for 90mins, 66°C for 30mins and then let it sit at 60°C for another hour since it was getting late into the evening and the missus wanted some attention. Figured it should be alright if kept warm...

Went out in the late evening and drained + sparged 2L @ 64°C, and I ended up with significantly less than I was hoping for but obviously what I had estimated. Around about 36L probably. Was going to do more sparging but was getting a little tired. Chilled it right down (18m of coil really does make a difference), filled it up with clean water until about 50L and then pitched yeast.

Decided to try out WLP045 - Scotch Yeast from the HBS since it was out of date (by 4 days) and therefore cheap. Made a starter a few hours beforehand, but it didn't look that promising. Pitched it anyway and it's bubbling atm (~12 hours later).

Also picked up a WLP028 - Edinburgh Scottish Ale, same best before date, which I am keen to try as well.

Just using Pilsner malt, but have a few varieties on hand due to a bulk buy that a beer mate got me in on. Might've been a once off, but I scored about 6 bags at decent prices.

Very keen to see how this turns out, to wash the yeast and reuse it, and to get something that I'm especially proud of.

[Brendan]

Unfortunately, my strong wording of 'a common misconception...etc' could have been out of place.

That theory on mash bill calculation I first picked up from Pintoshine, who was consulting to the distilling industry, particularly on bourbon. So on that account, it is certain that many bourbon distilleries calculate that way.

On the other hand, I've heard many people argue the opposite (that it's just a percentage of the total weight), and have not been able to find enough information sources to support either way...

My opinion now...near enough, good enough. There's so many other factors to get right. If you make something you're happy with, write down the recipe and stick with it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

That's the best Ive got for you at the moment... :shifty:

edit: Sorry, you're looking at 100% malt barley, not mixing malts like in Bourbon. I personally think it would be intuitive that you're not going to get 7kg of sugar from 7kg of malt etc. I would definitely be looking at the sugar by weight to calculate how much malt you need per mash...