[EDIT: Sorry Contrarian, you snuck in while I was writing the below
. I take myself very seriously but only when drinking
.
Yep, your philosophy is correct/good/nice. I think the only issue we would have on this site is passing on new, not fully tested practices to new brewers. For example, a 15 minute boil would not be regarded as best practice although you may get a reasonable beer out of it. I for one, don't want to be answering a thousand questions as to "Why is my beer cloudy?" and that is just one question that would arise from 15 minute boils for many brewers.
If you go back to BIAB history, you'll see that we never said everyone should BIAB. In fact, we only had one BIAB thread going for many months. We explored with enthusiasm but had a healthy doubt as well and did not "tell" new brewers that we had no doubts about BIAB until many brews had been done and competitions won. In other words, I think we did everything pretty responsibly.
I think the main thing on this site is to keep stuff like this in the Old Hands thread. (We better move this thread there!) We did actually have an experimental area but Old Hands is the best place for this stuff for the moment.]
Milan37 wrote:...at least a few pro brewers going with 20-minute mashes, and at least one says "The malt that's in use worldwide is modified enough that enzyme conversion is done within a matter of a few minutes" (emphasis mine).
Nice link milan
I think the last post thre is probably a good summary...
We've seen no discernible difference in beers made with MOPA instead of 2 row pale or Pilsen Malts as far as conversion time.
Even if the sugars do take longer to convert let's walk through the timing.
We mash in for about 20 mins. So the malt has seen an average of 10 mins right there.
Then we rest for about 5 mins
Then we start vorlauf for 25 mins
So by the time runoff starts mash has seen an average of 40 mins of conversion.
We then Sparge with 170*F water which doesn't significantly raise the mash bed temp for more than 20-30 mins.
So all told the mash sees 40-60 mins of conversion, more than adequate time for sugars to convert in addition to the starches, even though we only rest for 1-5 mins. It's a mistake to think that conversion time and rest time are the same thing. You have to look at total process time, and temperature to figure out what will work best with each system.
I think it's important to note that the grain is 'seeing' hot water for an hour, not 10-30 minutes. The post in the link on "starch AND SUGAR" conversion was interesting as well. We've posted on this site before that an iodine test is a very poor indicator that a mash is complete.
In the numbers we've been collecting here, there is no doubt that gravity increases the longer that the grain is kept in contact with hot water. We also know that some grains do convert faster than others and that is one reason why occasionally you won't see much improvement on 'numbers' from 60-90 minutes 'contact time'. On most grain bills though you will see a little improvement at least. It's important not to forget these things.
I think the possible under-attenuation mentioned earlier in this thread is something to investigate as well as whether the fine/normal crush has anything (major, at least) to do with the "contact time" issue.
All good fun eh?
If you have found
the above or anything else of value on BIABrewer.info, consider supporting us by
getting some BIPs!
,
