Congress at Home: Basic Malt Evaluation for Homebrewers

Drew (@drewbage), this technique certainly permits us homebrewers to evaluate the flavor of the wort but after fermentation the malt backbone of the resulting beer is quite different. How do you guess how a given wort's flavor will 'translate' in the finished beer?

Cheers!

 

That's certainly the trick, isn't it? What I've tended to notice is that the high note characters remain intact - the graininess, toastiness, hay, roast, etc. The ones that are harder to read are the sweet ones like Caramels/Crystals, etc because it's difficult to get a bead on the sweetness that remains post fermentation.

 

Plus, different yeast strains are enzymatically different, so you might not get the same character from the malt, fermentation to fermentation.

 

This sounds like a fantastic tool for evaluating malts.

Is there a simpler way to do this without a sous vide circulator? Could I just use an insulated thermos as a mini mash tun, adding water to the grains at the appropriate temperature to hit a mash temp of 149F, and then strain the mash through a coffee filter?

 

Different species of yeast certainly have different enzymes, which makes them behave differently towards the various sugars. But if you are using the same strain in each fermentation you should get the same character from the malt.

 

I can see how this could be useful, much like brewing tea from different hop varieties to get a sense of their flavors, but it's too much work for me so I'll encourage the rest of you so I can read your results.

 

Andrea Stanley of Valley Malt did a demonstration using this technique at a malt seminar earlier this year in MI. You can really taste differences in the malts.

The technique has been addopted by the ASBC.
http://blog.brewingwithbriess.com/w.../05/Briess_WortSensory_ASBCHotSteepMethod.pdf

 

I don't have any thermos'. I could buy some but I wouldn't really use them for anything else...

I was given a couple of yeti mugs as presents and I have a yeti-esk mug. I'd assume those should keep the mash at the appropriate temperature for 15 minutes.

I don't have a sous-vide circulator and I am not ready to drop the money for one of those.

 

To be clear - this is an adaptation of the Briess process that Jeff linked to above. I think anything that can hold temp and aromas for 15 minutes would work. I used a sous vide circulator just because I had a bunch of malts to try at once and thought it was a fun way to work it.

 

Preheat you oven on the lowest setting, and put the samples in there when it is at 150F.

Another way would be to have a pan on the stovetop and have a 150F water bath ready to put the samples into.