In another thread Dave Taylor suggested I try a 20 minute mash for my American mild. Seemed interesting but I kinda dismissed it as to far outside the norm…Yeah, I know. Well, at Club Night at PNWHC last weekend, a guy asked me if I wanted to try his 20 Minute IPA. So I did…WOW! It was an amazing beer. 20 min. mash, 20 min. boil! Heavy FWH then a buttload of hops at flameout. Fantastic beer! I wish I would have gotten his name, but if anybody out there knows him, please have him contact me! This is something I fully intend to try.
I wanted to try the same with my mild this past weekend. However, I grossly underestimated how long it was going to take to heat up my sparge water. (Finally started batch sparging.) Ended up being a 45 minute mash. If I do a rebrew that’s one of the things I want to try next.
Yay, another potential convert. Certainly worth experimentation by more people.
For the record, I typically would not recommend a 20-minute mash for an IPA. I’m strictly a 40-minute kind of guy based on tons of experimentation – just brewed another 40-minute ESB again yesterday and hit 81% brewhouse efficiency, yadda yadda. But for a small beer like a mild, it might make sense to try a super short mash for bigger body.
EDIT: Okay, so maybe just a touch more background… the previous thread is here:
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=26118.msg337329#msg337329
FWIW, there was nothing special about the body in the 20 min. beer. Meaning that based on that example, it wouldn’t add the body to my mild that I hope it would.
And I normally wouldn’t try a 20 min. mash at all, but this beer was absolutely great.
Maybe really push the envelope and only mash for 10-15 minutes!? Just as soon as most of the starches turn to sugars that can be measured by refractometer as approaching the pre-boil OG that you’d anticipated, call it good and start the boil. Might happen in as little as 10 minutes?? For example, say you wanted a pre-boil gravity of 1.040. Using refractometer, you can easily test for this every 3-4 minutes if you want. Then just as soon as you get close, like 1.038 or so, immediately end the mash / heat 'er up to the boil. What happens to body of the final beer if you do that??? I have my hypothesis!!!
I want this to be the fall swap challenge beer.
I think Pete just volunteered to run Swaptoberfest
I knew someone would say that as soon as I hit reply and I could have guessed who.[emoji3]
I’d like to get more out of 2-row!
For us batchspargers is the method to start the run-off @20 minutes (or the right gravity) into the kettle and start heating? What about an effective mashout in this particular instance if we’re talking about halting enzymatic action?
This might be the only scenario where I would consider running an iodine test.
Agreed.
I also like the idea of a solid mash-out for this, but it may not be necessary if conversion is complete.
I can’t see the point of a mashout in batch sparging, no matter what you;re tryiong to achieve. The mashout itself would take at least 20 min., which is longer than the time from runoff to boil.
Forget the mashout for the reasons I listed. Just sparge with 190F water.
That’s what I do.
Same here, but it’s with 180F water on my system for some reason. Usually gets me to about 167F depending on my mash temp.
Sounds exciting then! I’ll just lauter into the kettle. Get a flame going under that (which ought to substitute for the mashout)- do the next sparge and lauter…
Getting the mash and both sparges done in under an hour for a 10 gallon batch sounds unreal to me.
Perhaps I should commit to a much smaller batch on this. Time to break out the 2 gallon tun.
I start my runoff slowly while I vorlauf a qt. or so. After I pour that back in, I open the valve full. Of course, that will depend on your own system.