Help, mash temp dropped too low, & not enough sugars.

[Ska_J]

Hi all, I am doing a hophead clone (see below for recipe) and tried using the correct ratio of water in my mash where I previously had just gone with whatever fits into the tun (ie a lot more). Unfortunately this has resulting in a temperature drop all the way to 62 by the end of the mash! I understand this is going to have given me very fermentable sugars, which will leave me with a dry beer, right? Well not only that, but I'm also 11 litres down going into the boil as the SG (corrected for temp and reduced volume after boiling) would not be anywhere near the target.

Qu, is there anything to stop me doing an emergency, small, second mash? If so and I did this one at a higher temp, would I have a chance of balancing the overly fermentable sugars out?

Speedy responses would be much appreciated, as we're already into the boiler!

Thanks,
James.



Ingredients
23L @ 85% effiiciency, 90min mash @ 67°C, 90min boil, GW's liquor = bitter
Amount Item Type % or IBU
3.27 kg Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 98.00 %
0.07 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 55L (120.0 EBC) Grain 2.00 %
10.00 gm Cascade [7.20 %] (90 min) Hops 7.9 IBU
180.00 gm Cascade [5.34 %] (5 min) Hops 19.8 IBU
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.039 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.009 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 3.84 %
Bitterness: 27.7 IBU
Est Color: 8.9 EBC

[jmc]

Hi

Nothing to stop you doing a high temp (69C) mash to get some less fermentable sugars, if you have the time.
Maybe for just 1 hour, but check for conversion if you're doing it quickly or you could end up with a starch haze.

You could always delay boil until this 2nd batch of wortis ready. I'd definitely include 2nd set of boil in at least last 30 mins boil to ensure protiens precipitate(break).

BTW: I think 85% efficiency in your recipe may be a bit hopeful. I nearly always use 75%.

Good luck

[Ska_J]

Thanks for your speedy response jmc!

Boil is on hold, and I'm doing a high temp mini-mash.

I've not got iodine, which I believe is what is used to test for full conversion. But I'm not in a rush, so I can give it time. Out of interest, is the risk only one of a haze in the beer? I'm more concerned about flavour than clarity at the moment, particularly now that I've had this issue.

This is my 2nd AG after a few years out (abroad), and I only did 3 before, so I'm learning some lessons

J.

[darkonnis]

If you're down on the water going in to the boil, You may wish to boil for less time. 60Minutes is perfectly fine for example for most things. If you are actually 11L down, then boiling off another 8L isnt going to help you really and you'll end up with thick goop (23L fv, therefore 28L pre boil, 11L down so 17L pre boil, lose 6 - 8 for a 90min boil time)
From what I've read, the majority of conversion happens within the first 30 - 40 minutes, so if you've done 90 minutes already, I don't know what "new" stuff you'll get out of it. Try it
I've since given up worrying about haze, getting the FV cold and just letting it sit for a few days gets most of the crap out and leaves it clear

[Ska_J]

If you're down on the water going in to the boil, You may wish to boil for less time.

Yeah, if volume was my only concern then I'd do that, or just accept less beer , but my other concern is that the highly fermentable sugar that the low temp mash will have created will mean I end up with a super low FG, and I presume a very dry beer.

From what I've read, the majority of conversion happens within the first 30 - 40 minutes, so if you've done 90 minutes already, I don't know what "new" stuff you'll get out of it.

I mean I'm doing a completely fresh mash, so a new batch of grain, higher temp to get some less-fermentable sugars out. I'm only doing a small one, basically to make up for that 11 L shortage. I don't know how much difference I can make there, but I figure it's worth a go.

I have another question for everyone, which is: Does it really make any difference if I use a much higher water:grain ratio for mashing? I haven't actually been able to find anything to argue for the standard 2.5 apart from (maybe) efficiency. Clearly temperature is more important, and I've just failed on that front!

[darkonnis]

aha, right, now i understand what you mean about a fresh mash, yeah that'd certainly help.
Speculation here: The only reason i can think of, for sticking to 2.5Litres of water per kg grain is that you'd maybe have so much water that the conversion process took longer as a result. But thats pure speculation i have no ide how fast an enzyme gets from point A to B and its never something i'd previously considered.
How did it go in the end?

[Ska_J]

I suppose the conversion taking longer might make sense, after all both the sugar and enzymes are more diluted in the mash. I'd certainly like to hear if anyone knows about this for sure though, as it seems a lot more reliable just to fill my tun to the brim in terms of heat retention.

As for how it went, the SG was 1.044, so I more than made up for the initial poor performance. I'm happy to be a few points over the target, and hopefully a reasonable proportion of that second mash will be less fermentable sugars. It's now sat in a larder in a small bath of cool water trying to keep the temperature down! I think a temperature controlled environment is probably the next on my wish list. Although I'd also not mind one of those buffalo boilers, as at the moment my HLT and boiler are the same thing, which does have some drawbacks...

Anyway, I also sampled a smidgen of the London Pride clone I have conditioning, and that is tasting a little sweet, and to be honest a bit plain, so if this comes out dry even after my emergency mini-mash then pride/hophead cocktails might be the way to go

[kebabman]

Its a while since I last had a pint of hophead but it does live up to its name so I would think that an IBU of 27.7 would be way too low, I am guessing that it should be around 1:1 BU:GU so about 39 IBU

[Ska_J]

The recipe (as with everything I've done so far) is taken from somewhere on this forum, as I'm not quite up to recipe formulation yet. For what it's worth, I actually thought the bitterness in hophead was not too high, it really seemed to me to be mainly about that massive hop flavour. It may still be on the low side of course- I'm certainly no expert yet! I did add a few more hops into the boil, as I figured my increased OG (at the time based on some back-of-an-envelope calculations from the convoluted way this beer came together!) would demand more bitterness. I wasn't aware of "BU:GU" as a ratio though, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Another thing that I've not really considered until now was how my hops might be quite different compared with the posted recipes, and it looks like these are. 27.7 IBU is from the original post. Plugging this into the beer engine program (which I just downloaded) with the actual stated alpha figure, mine look to come to 35, so a little bit better than 27.7.

Note to self, modify recipes based on my hops!

[kebabman]

I use the BU:GU ratio all the time time now as a good guide to bitterness that my finished beer will have.
Like you say you need to keep on your toes adjusting for each years differing AA% when you change to a new years hops, and allow for loss of AA in older hops and if your brew is likely to come out sweeter or drier than usual as residual sweetness will obviously mask bitterness to some extent.
I would be very interested to hear how this brew turns out with the huge late charge of hops and like you say the 35 IBU may well be plenty to support the hop flavour.

[jmc]

Glad you got the wort sorted out.
I think the late addition of hops will be really beneficial for a hop aroma. Sounds lovely.

Regarding mash ratios, for mash times we do (60-90 mins) I don't think ratio (within limits) matters much to mash chemistry.

Most of the time I use standard 2.5L/Kg, but when I'm doing a stepped mash, say for a wheat beer
(50C protein rest & 67C main mash) I use 1.9:1 for 50C step & 3.5:1 for main mash.
I have a 49L coolbox so volume not a problem on 23L brewlength

I also tried a couple of ale brews using 3:5 to 1, to try to fill up mash tun and reduce heat loss. They tasted fine.
Heat loss was less, but then amount of sparge water was less so I think efficiency decreased and I reverted to 2:5 to 1.

Off topic aside-
For stepped mash I use 1:9:1 for 50C rest as it works fine and I can heat this up to 67C with water around 94C.
If I have a 50C stage at 2.5:1 I cant heat it to 67C, even with boiling water.
I don't have any other way of heating my mash tun other than hot water additions.

[Ska_J]

Thanks jmc, I had considered other possibilities if the mash ratio turned out to be important, like filling some bottles up with the strike water and putting them in the mash-tun to help with my temperature retention while maintaining the ratio. I also made a mistake in starting with the grain in the mash-tun, which meant I skipped my usual step of a pre-mash warm-up from the kettle, this probably had quite an impact when combined with the smaller volume of water compared to usual.

Just an idea related to your off-topic aside: If the protein rest is specifically for the wheat (as I understand from a quick search), could you do this step with only the wheat, allowing you to use a 2.5:1 ratio and still reach temperature? The remaining malt could go in after the rest. Or is perhaps the other grain an important source of enzymes needed for the protein rest?

If anyone is interested, byo.com has an article (from 1999) about mash thickness. The general idea seemed to be that a thicker mash helps retain beta-amylase activity (which further breaks down what the Alpha-amylase has converted from the starch). This should mean that a thicker mash produces more fermentable sugars, but the article does point out that this is a bit simplified- with pH and ion concentrations playing their parts too- and that there is also a balance with efficiency.

[jmc]

...
Just an idea related to your off-topic aside: If the protein rest is specifically for the wheat (as I understand from a quick search), could you do this step with only the wheat, allowing you to use a 2.5:1 ratio and still reach temperature? The remaining malt could go in after the rest. Or is perhaps the other grain an important source of enzymes needed for the protein rest?
...

I take your point, but in my wheat beer I also have some Bohemian floor malted pilsner malt. This benefits from a stepped mash.

If I wanted to mash the wheat separately I'd go for a decoction mash, where wheat and a little malt stepped up (initially) separately from main mash. I've only done this once, and while interesting it did take me ages.

BTW: In my experience the 50c step also helps run off, as does raising temp while sparging to 76-78C (mash-out)

[Ska_J]

Despite my resolution to leave this one alone to do it's thing, I'm too intrigued by the process and the changes not to try it during fermentation. So, under the guise of taking a hydrometer reading, I'm now having an early sample- damn thing already tastes good after 2 days! I hope the level of hop aroma/flavour I'm getting now doesn't drop too much over time, because it is fantastic. I was slightly concerned that it's at the top end of the temperature range, but a large portion of the work seems to have been done already, and I can't detect any off flavours at this point.

Gravity is down to 1.012, which is fast compared to the others I've done. Given that dryness was a concern I'm glad to note that the airlock has significantly reduced it's output after a fairly frantic first 24 hours of blurping noises. Fingers crossed.

I'll now attempt to resist further tests until kegging, 11 or 12 days from now...