Good Pilsner recipe

I appreciate your perspective of: “Fully modified malt should convert fine in an hour, even at 145F.”

Greg Doss gave a presentation at the 2012 NHC conference on his experiments of attenuation. He conducted one experiment where he mashed Pilsner malt at 151°F for varying amounts of time and measured the attenuation that he obtained. Below is a summary of his results:

· 45 minutes: 80.19%
· 60 minutes: 83.02%
· 75 minutes: 85.71%
· 90 minutes: 84.91%

So, my reading of the above results is that for a lower mash temperature (151°F for this particular case) that it is beneficial to mash for 75 minutes (presuming you want higher attenuation).

Cheers!

 

Gonna need you to start including footnotes to your posts.

 

I'm always within a point or two of my target OG so i'm gonna guess yes, I do get full conversion. Could I get more if I mashed longer? Perhaps, but there's definitely a law of diminishing returns at play here. And it could be that I'm familiar enough with my setup that I account for a small loss of gravity points by starting with a little more malt than someone else might use. For me it's better to use that other 15 minutes(if it really is even that long) boiling the wort.

 

Usually time is not an issue for me, so I've just been mashing everything for 75 minutes. Not sure if the extra time does anything (it probably doesn't) but figured it couldn't hurt much. Anyone have any reasons why NOT to mash the extra 15 minutes?

 

“Not sure if the extra time does anything (it probably doesn't) but figured it couldn't hurt much.”

According to experiments that Kai Troester conducted, the ‘extra’ 15 minutes will lead to some increased efficiency. For example, for his mash at 67°C (152.6°F) his mash efficiency increased by a few points from 60 minutes to 75 minutes.

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.ph...ity_and_efficiency_in_single_infusion_mashing

According to the experiments that Greg Doss conducted and presented at NHC 2012, the fermentability of the wort increased with additional time as I presented in the above post.

Now, it is up to you whether an increase in efficiency is ‘worth’ the extra 15 minutes since you can always compensate by just increasing the amount of malt mashed but the increase in fermentability can be a big deal if you are desirous of producing a dry beer (a more highly attenuated beer).

Cheers!

 

Good info man!

At the homebrew 5 gallon batch level, the extra malt won't cost much. So if time becomes a major issue, I'll just buy some extra malt

Right now I'm eyeballing the stuff I need to go to ten gallons. Eyeballing. Soon it will be mine.

 

“So if time becomes a major issue, I'll just buy some extra malt.” That will certainly solve the efficiency part of the equation.

If at some time you have a desire (or have a preference) for creating a fermentable wort to create a dry beer then you might want to consider a longer mash.

I haven’t ‘said’ this for a while so I will say it now (again): make the beers you like and make them the way you like.

Cheers!

 

That's good advice that I already follow.