The art of mashing

Mashing is hard. At least, when you're first starting out and you don't have anyone to show you the ropes. When I first switched from extract brewing to all-grain brewing the quality of my beers took a major dive. There are a lot of new and tricky things to consider! The size and shape of your mash tun, the cost, the ability to retain heat or perhaps add heat, the ability to effectively sparge and remove the wort when mashing is finished, grain depth, extraction efficiency, channeling, mash time, stuck sparges, sparge temperature and "rests", water to grain ratio, fly vs. batch, lautering, vorlauf, the list goes on. The complexity of this part of home brewing is quite representative of its ability to affect the final quality of the beer. Make no mistake. This is one of the most important parts of brewing beer.





Well, no worries. I can at least get you started. Consider these revealing words from John Palmer the author of "How to Brew":

A compromise of all factors yields the standard mash conditions for most homebrewers: a mash ratio of about 1.5 quarts of water per pound grain, pH of 5.3, temperature of 150-155°F and a time of about one hour. These conditions yield a wort with a nice maltiness and good fermentability.

And beyond that I'll even take you one step further. If you are doing a single "rest" (that is, temperature) keep in mind the following rule of thumb: Between 145-155°F will give you the most fermentable sugars in your wort (wort is unfermented beer). That means that barring any other adjuncts (AKA additional ingredients such as specialty malts) your beer will be more "dry" and have less "body" and have a higher alcohol content.

If you ferment at a higher temperature such as between 155-165 °F your final beer will be sweeter, have more body, and have a lower alchol content (all other things beeing equal). Thats the quick and dirty truth.

So how do you determine what your mashing temperature will be? I'd recommend using a calculator such as this one: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/infusion.html

Start using that consistently and you'll begin to notice a pattern for your particular style and equipment. In other words if you are using that calculator every time and you find your final mash temperature is a couple of degrees too low just begin adding a couple of degrees to the infusion temperature it gives you.

As far as a mash tun goes, well, I just constructed one out of a rubbermaid cylindrical cooler like so many have posted on the internet. It works pretty well with the main drawback being that it doesn't lend itself to multi-step mashing very well. Multi-step mashing is when you ferment for various times at different temperatures (typically starting at a lower temperature and working your way up) to lend more complexity to your final beer. Later I may write an article on advanced mashing that describes a good way to go about this.

In closing, try to be detailed oriented in your mashing and I promise your final beer will turn out better. The good news is that sanitation doesn't matter at this point because your going to boil everything! You should still make sure everything is clean though ;)

Happy mashing!