60 minute mash Vs 20 minute mash

Simonh82 said:

For commercial breweries, efficiency is a big deal. For us, the difference might be a couple of handfuls of grain but for them it could be several sacks worth. If you are running a business that matters.

The other issue that no one has mentioned is conversion of starch to sugars. It not simply extract efficiency which is clearly still reasonable with a short mash but also the amount and fermentability of the sugars produced. The grain might give up it's starch in 20 minutes but as the differences in attenuation demonstrate it may not be fully converted. Clearly there is plenty of fermentable sugars in a 20-30 minute mash but starch carry over in to a finished beer can cause shelf stability issues, so breweries might be happy to mash for an hour to make sure everything is fully converted

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Thanks for the explanation. :hat:

JonBrew said:

............ I mashed and boiled for 30 minutes each. ................

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I may be wrong, (it's happened before) but I've always understood that the reason we treat the wort to a "rolling boil" is to ...

• Get the best out of the Bittering Hops,
• Drive off a whole raft of volatile stuff that could seriously affect the taste of the brew,

... with 60 minutes being a minimum period in which to succeed with these endeavours.

I suppose that an increased amount of Bittering Hops could result in less time being needed to extract the required bitterness, but I'm unconvinced that removing the volatile elements in the wort could be achieved in such a short time.

I'm also cynical enough to reckon that if increased efficiency and better profits resulted in a **** brew, the bean-counters that run many commercial breweries wouldn't mind!:no:

Dutto said:

I may be wrong, (it's happened before) but I've always understood that the reason we treat the wort to a "rolling boil" is to ...

• Get the best out of the Bittering Hops,
• Drive off a whole raft of volatile stuff that could seriously affect the taste of the brew,

... with 60 minutes being a minimum period in which to succeed with these endeavours.

I suppose that an increased amount of Bittering Hops could result in less time being needed to extract the required bitterness, but I'm unconvinced that removing the volatile elements in the wort could be achieved in such a short time.

I'm also cynical enough to reckon that if increased efficiency and better profits resulted in a **** brew, the bean-counters that run many commercial breweries wouldn't mind!:no:

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Another reason for the rolling boil is to get a good hot break

Mashing at a high temperature also gives fermentable sugars, albeit less than at low temperature.

After several failed attempts at looking for 30 minute boil times I've resorted in using this thread instead

Anyone had any good results with small batch shorter boil times?
The malts I used were Maris and crystal so unlikely to have DMS attributes

Cheers

Depending on your malt bill & using good quality modern malts - you certainly can speed things up if you have to ! Personally I think there is a difference in flavour and mouth feel . So those flavours ( usually a slightly thinner beer) are what you are going for why not . Personally I have always loved a rich malty depth in my beers so I mash longer to achieve that.
A significant fact is that much of the American craft movement has embraced a lot of experimentation and some people love the results. However aficionados of the traditional British, Belgium and German Styles styles are likely to be less impresses with the results of these shortcuts as our pallettes are trained to look for rather different qualities . Hops are not all about IBU and mashing is not just about achieving full conversion. There is a massive interaction between water quality, temperature and time and equipment and the malts you use that affects flavour. Personally I believe my "house flavour" is very influenced by the fact for many of my home styles I start my mash slightly below the usual temp and then crank it up. Not sure i could achieve that in a shortened mash