Grainfather mash stirring

jceg316 said:

I've considered doing step mashes but I'm yet to find a recipe which requires it, I don't use them in my own recipes (as I'm not sure what temps and why), and when I look into it I come across a lot which says British malts are highly modified to step mashes aren't necessary. What's on paper is often different to reality, do you find any other improvements with step mashes?

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Zephyr259 said:

My step mashes were for a wheat beer, a tripel with a lot of unmalted grains and a fair percentage of malted wheat and oats and a golden sour with a fair bit of wheat and oats. The sparging was fine in all 3, could have been the low rests or the oat husks or both.

I did a 30 min at each of 63c and 72c then the usual mash out for my last bock for no reason other than I could and to see what happened. What happened was it fermented fine, first bottle was tasty but young then the rest went ropy and still are to my knowledge. :-(

I use a fair bit of Weyermann munich and vienna and the recipes on their site suggest step mashes for most things. Continental malt may be less modified than British but probably still fine to use a single rest. I read an article on how commercial belgian beer are different because (among other things) they are step mashed for better body and head, but it still felt a bit like holding on to the romanticism of older techniques which may not be needed with modern malts and may not really give as much benefit as they are said to.

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jceg316 said:

Ah damn, do you think that was down to the mash or was it that you can't tell because you don't wanna drink ropy beer?

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