Getting Into All-Grain Brewing: Some thoughts on our first attempt at mashing

This past weekend my brew partners and I were attempting to move from extract brewing to partial mash brewing. This is where a greater portion of the wort is produced by converting the starches in the grains to sugars.

Up until now, I have been only brewing with extracts and specialty grains. However, I had proposed to my brother-in-law that we brew a Roggenbier for his mother's upcoming family reunion in 2014. Roggenbier is a beer that contains a significant amount of rye and wheat. Never having brewed this style of beer before, nor having ever brewed with rye, I suggested we attempt a small 2.5gal test batch doing a partial mash as rye extracts are not readily available. Our local homebrew (High Gravity in Tulsa) supply does not carry it, but it is available from Northern Brewer. But that would mean having to order it and this seemed to me to be an as good as of an excuse as any to move to working more with grains.

So I formulated a recipe (I will reveal this later) and we moved on to researching a process. I found what I thought would be a simple process for us to begin with. The brew-in-bag method, which I found a good detailed description here on the HomeBrewTalk.com forum:

Easy Partial Mash Brewing (with pics)

The explanation was very good and is probably a good enough process is you are brewing simple beers like brown ales, we ran into a few issues when we attempted it with our roggenbier style.

Basically, with the brew-in-bag method you are doing all if your mashing in a brew kettle inside of a grain bag. You add water that is hot enough to the grain to bring your grain to mashing temperature. Between 145 to 158 degrees.

These are few of the things that probably affected the outcome of our first venture into mashing.

First. We were not being able to keep our temp up above 145 efficiently. We started with water that was 160 degrees but once we added the grain the temp dropped significantly which was to be expected. But after awhile our temp was dipping below 145 and it took considerable effort to get it back up and keep it there. We avoided adding direct heat to the kettle and tried to bring the heat back up by placing our kettle inside of another kettle with water in it in double-boiler fashion and adding heat that way. We found that for some reason this method was not raising our grain temp very quickly. While the water bath temp was well above 190 degrees our grain temp was still hovering around 144-145 degrees.

"For the homebrewer just getting into all-grain style recipes, controlling the mash pH is not as big of a concern as controlling temperature." ~ Joe Postma, Homebrewing: Introduction to Mashing and All-Grain Brewing.

While it may be possible to keep the temp at the desired range with the method we were attempting...a better way of keeping the temp stable would be preferable in my opinion.

"Temperature control is key to proper mashing. In order to activate the enzymes that convert grain into simple sugar, the mash temperature must be between 145°F and 158°F. For most styles of beer, a mash temperature of 150-154°F is used, and will produce a wort that can be easily fermented by the yeast while retaining a medium body. If the mash temperature is in the 145-150°F range, the enzymes will produce highly fermentable sugars and the final product will have a drier finish. Mash temperatures in the 155-158°F range will produce sugars that are harder for the yeast to ferment, resulting in a fuller bodied beer. Mashing in the lower temperature range is appropriate for styles like a Saison or a Tripel, where the higher temperature range is used for Scotch ales and Sweet Stouts."~ Joe Postma, Homebrewing: Introduction to Mashing and All-Grain Brewing.

The second thing I see is the time during the mash. A one hour minimum is needed at mash temp. Because we were having to deal so much with keeping our temp up I really can't say for sure if we had a full hour at mashing temperatures or not.

The third factor was we really needed to do a Mash Out, especially since we had rye in our mash (rye can get very thick and gooey)... mash out is basically bringing the temp of the mash up to 170 degrees to get the syrup flowing free like when you heat up honey. After we had sparged our grain bag I noticed it still had a lot of syrup left behind. That was all sugar... and I am sure was a contributing factor as to why our OG (original gravity) was lower than expected. Also, if we had been using a lauter tun with a false bottom, or a converted cooler with a manifold, we probably would have seen this as a stuck mash which is why the temp must be brought up to 170 degrees to make sure the syrup liquefies enough to flow.

Another thing that we were not able to do with this method was to recirculate our wort back through the grain bed which also probably affected our final outcome.

Maybe the method we used would work well enough for simple brews, but for the rye/wheat beer style we were attempting... we need a better process.

I think moving to the converted cooler will produce much better results. This is will be our next project. Converting a cooler into a mash/lauter tun. I will let you know how that turns out.

By the way, here are a couple of good resources for learning about getting into All Grain brewing:

Homebrewing: Introduction to Mashing and All-Grain Brewing

How to Brew - by John Palmer: Section 3 - Brewing Your First All-Grain Beer