Thought Experiment: Enhancing Malt Flavor

I actually don’t own the book and had borrowed it from a friend when I started brewing so I’m sure you’re right. The funny part is I never do a mash out since I read(misread) it and now I swear by it. I still think a no mash out beer would have less tannins

 

I "mashout" by adding the rest of my no sparge water to the mashtun. This is usually with 160 degree water. I do it to get my water closer to boiling temps and because this is my adjusted way of following @VikeMan 's method. I used to add all the water in the initial mash in but have since adopted adding it later. Saves a little time and I have more of a traditional mash thickness to start.

 

Some folks practice a mash out to achieve a target OG value. If you are unconcerned if the OG value is a bit higher than a certain value then you do not need to mash out.

Cheers!

 

It would accomplish a similar thing, but not the same. With a mashout, you know exactly when you wacked the enzymes, rather than counting on the kettle heating to do it at a consistent time. And with a mashout (as opposed to mashing for 10 minutes less or whatever) , more time is spent with the grains, extracting flavors.

 

Once you reach full conversion of starches to dextrins/sugars, more time isn't going to increase the pre-boil OG, though it will influence fermentability. (And if an early mashout prevents full conversion...well, I don't know why anyone would want to do that.)

That said, a mashout can improve lautering/mash efficiency, which will get slightly more wort from the tun to the kettle. It won't be higher or lower gravity wort, but since there's more of it, boiling it (longer) down to the same final volume will increase post-boil OG as compared with no mashout. But I would say the effect is fairly small.

 

Interesting idea and I would love to hear the results. Personally, I believe that shortening or reducing time or volume of wort in the boil would have a deleterious effect on malt character. You’d definitely get less melanoidins, but then there’s other flavor compounds that develop during a vigorous boil. Something Dr. Bamforth calls the ‘cooked beer’ malt character.

Take a commercial brewery. The steam goes on as soon as there’s a couple of gallons in the kettle. Depending on the size of the brewhouse, runoff can be 1-3 hours or more. I’ve seen European breweries that have 6 hour runoffs! The whole time, the wort in the kettle is being kept at near-boiling temps to minimize lag time between kettle full and boil start. Add a 30 minute boil and hour or two cool-in and suddenly a recipe that says “boil for 60 minutes” actually means “hold at or near boiling for 5-6 hours”.

This always puzzled me. Getting everything you could out of the grain and then liquoring-down if it came in too high always seemed to make more sense. But to each their own, I guess!

 

First, I always want full conversion. Full conversion means that all the starches have been converted to something other than starches. But within that full conversion state, there's a continuum of potential fermentability, based on the proportions of various sugars and dextrins that make up the wort. That's where the mash length (and other factors) come into play.

I don't think I've ever shot for the lowest FG possible. I can't imagine why I would do that. But if I did, I would mash for 4 or 5 hours, to allow enzymes to keep working up until they have all denatured. But all other things being equal, this would result in a much drier beer than would be typical for the style/recipe.

 

If all of the starch in the mash has fully converted than a mash out will not affect the OG value. If there is some remaining starch remaining (e.g., a mash with low DP as one example) then further conversion will occur during the sparge process.

It is also the case that the fermentability of the wort can be altered during the sparge if a mash out is not conducted; breaking long-chain dextrins into shorter, more fermentable sugar.

You stated: “I've never been too concerned whether or not the OG is a point or two above or below my target…”. If you share a similar thought as regards the FG value then I would suggest that conducting a mash out is not something that you need to be concerned about.

Cheers!

 

Just curious...how big is your picnic cooler? I have a 52 quart cooler that's big enough for mashing out all but the biggest worts, like really big imperial stouts. I'm talking about 5 gallon batches.