15-minute mash

[BigBadBrad]

On last weeks show, Eric Watson talked about only mashing for 15 minutes before recirculating and then sparging. His reasoning was that highly modified grains that are high in alpha and beta amylase only take about 5 minutes to convert starches, so a longer mash is not necessary. This made sense to me, so I gave it a try yesterday. I made the Arctic Red Ale recipe from the October issue of BYO (page 11). I mashed at 158 for 15 minutes, then began recirculating. I have a gravity system and no pump, so I drained 1 qt. at a time from the mash tun and pour it back in the top until the wort is running clear. After fly sparging, I hit my SG right on - 1.040 and my OG was dead on too - 1.054 after a 90 minute boil. I added a 1 liter starter of WLP007 right off the stir plate. It is now happily bubbling away at 65 degrees. Only time will tell if the short mash will make a difference in taste.

Has anyone else attempted this short mash schedule? I like that it shortened my brew day by at least 45 minutes. From start to finish, it was about 4 hours including clean up.

[mtruhe]

I was very interested in that also. How much did you have to recirculate? Your system sounds simialr to mine and I usually only need to pour back about a quart or so until it is clear. It would be nice to take an hour out of the brew day.

[pvignola]

I'm still not sold on the 15 minute mash idea. I would have to say it works though since Eric is doing it and making beer that sells. I just feel better doing my normal 60 minute mash. Maybe it's overkill, but it makes me feel safe that conversion has happend.

Brew On!

[BigBadBrad]

I didn't really count how many quarts I recirculated. Probably about 8 or so. I can't wait until this beer is ready to see if the shorter mash really worked. Eric mentioned having a wide and shallow grain bed, but he does 20 BBL batches and I do five gallons. Just a little less than him.

I used a five gallon round Igloo cooler for my mashtun with a stainless steel false bottom. I usually get between 65 and 70% efficiency.

[Lufah]

I listened to the archive again and he says that he does a 15min mash with a ~30min recirculation. That is a total of 45min contact time. So thats not that much less than a 60min mash that most homebrewers do.

Travis

[BigBadBrad]

I listened to the archive again and he says that he does a 15min mash with a ~30min recirculation. That is a total of 45min contact time. So thats not that much less than a 60min mash that most homebrewers do.

Travis

I probably had about 30 minutes of contact time after recirculating. I wish I had a pump so I could do a better job of recirculating since I believe that the clearer the wort going into the boil is, the cleaner the final product will taste.

[Danno]

... he says that he does a 15min mash with a ~30min recirculation.

Yep, that's the ticket. At least one of them. The other part of the process that he noted that really helped was confirming that the mash pH was between 5.2 and 5.4 because that aids in the efficiency of the enzymes to convert.

I'm sure most homebrewers pay attention to pH when they're formulating but how many confirm the mash pH every time? I try to on new recipes but rarely do when I repeat a batch. Maybe I sure watch it a bit closer.

Keep in mind also that people like George Fix promoted short mashes a long time ago (although he was an advocate of two sac rests).

-Dan

[mtruhe]

I assume his shallow grain bed allows for better extraction as you are creating a gradient through the filter bed and he has less of a difference between the top and the bottom. However I would think having a shallow bed would require longer recurculating as it doesn't provide as deep of a filter. I also assume that the shallow grain bed has no affect on conversion time, how could it? If conversion of well modified grains happens in 15 minutes why have we/I been mashing for 60-90 minutes?
It has been a while since I've been on a tour there, but doesn't Anchor use a very wide mashtun (as well as fermentor)?