Your Typical Mash Thickness?

For lagers 2qt/lb. maybe more for some.

Ales 1.25-1.5 qt/lb.

 

I aim for 1.3qt/lb.

 

Why the change for lagers?

 

Same all the time for me. 1.5qt/lb

 

The thicker mash works for the pale ale malts, that have less enzymes. For lagers with mainly Pils malt with more enzymes, thinner works. There are a few other reasons, but I just poured my first coffee of the day.

 

There's metric bumloads of enzymes in all base malts except perhaps for the darkest Munich malts. I wouldn't change ratio based on Lovibond of base malt.

I used 1.3 qt/lb for many years, until others discovered that it didn't matter so much, so now I mash a bit thinner at 1.5-2.0 qt/lb (maybe 1.75 average) and think this seems like a sweet spot between workability and enzyme concentration. I wouldn't raise an eyebrow all the way up to 3 qt/lb. Higher than that, it's closer to oceanic dilution in the tun so I start to wonder.

 

Generally 1.25/lb. if I'm a bit over I don't sweat it.

 

I vary from 1.2 with big beers that require more sparge water to up to 2.0 or so for light ABV beers that I would like to have more mash water to hold temp in my setup. I would say 1.5 is my standard for most.

 

I ask myself, "Self? What's the thickest mash I'm willing to try to stir hot water into?" Anything under 1.25 qt/lb seems to take a really long time to stir in. It isn't worth the effort to gain sparge water volume.

 

I used to faithfully use 1.25 based on older documentation. More recently, ratios of 1.5 or over seem to have been shown to be preferable. So now I use 1.5. It also results in better overall temperature (seems to help reduce "hot spots"), seems to maintain the temperature longer, and works better when the mash tun space is somewhat limited in size. Would be great if Brulosophy conducted sample tests on these possible advantages. I'm waiting until it is shown that even a higher dilution is preferable, and will then change to 1.75 or even 2.0.

 

I add in 5 gallons of water to tun, dough in, add water to consistency. Have no idea how much exactly that is. Haha.

 

I usually brew 3 gal batches, so to maximize sparging, I go with a very thick mash of between 1-1.15 qt/lb. I do a mashout so that usually adds about an extra 1 gal of water before I start the sparge.

 

Are you batch sparging? If so, the way to maximize efficiency is to ensure that each step of the batch sparge lauter process (i.e. each lauter step) runs off the same volume of wort. It's not completely intuitive (not to me, anyway), so I once spent a day with a spreadsheet to discover that if you do it that way, the wort left behind in the grains after the last step will have the lowest possible gravity, meaning more sugars made it from the mash tun to the kettle.

 

I have always used 1.15 to 1.2 qts per pound and usually get a consistent 75% eff. I do intend to up that on some trial brews to see what I get and to fill up the Igloo tun.

 

1.5qt/lb for me, doesn't vary with the recipe

 

It used to be about 1.25-1.5. Recently I switched to biab, no sparge, and it is now probably about 3. I never tried to make the same basic beer both ways in a way that would allow for side by side comparisons, but I'm not detecting overt taste differences between the beers I use to brew and the ones I'm making now.

Edit- #s are qts/lb

 

I build the recipe to 1.25 q/p but I usually round up to the next half gallon increment, then adjust the sparge water volume siren to compensate. This is for 15 gallon batches by the way so the extra volume isn't significant. I do like the idea of mashing thinner to help with maintaining temps a bit better. I'll probably start doing that now that the weather is getting colder.

 

I have pretty much always done 1.25qt/lb. before I switched over to my electrical system, my mash tuns did not have any dead space. However, now that I use a snake keg (upside down) as my mash tun, I have approximately 1 gallon of dead space. So my mash is slightly thinner than the average 1.25qt/lb. I've had great results. Plus one to the idea of maybe using 1.5-1.75qts for smaller grain bill batches for temperature adjustments.

 

I'll vary depending on how big the beer is….but i'd say my typical mash is 3 L/kg for any small to moderate size batch.