Though this is not my article the mashing schedule, which was outlined in the article, is something that I knew about for a few years now. So far I haven’t gotten around to trying it myself and thus haven’t written about it yet.
Unfortunately the author, Michael Elder, was only able to spend a few paragraphs on how that particular mash works. So let me add a few points. It was first proposed by Markus Hermann in his Dissertation in 2005. The idea was to find a mashing schedule that can increase the ester production such that even the ester suppressing fermentation conditions of tall conicals can create ester dominated Weissbiers. As a result this mashing scheme is not really something that home brewers can benefit from since we don’t have a problem with ester suppression in our comparatively shallow fermenters. But it’s worth a try for the geek factor and I plan to do so in the near future. It is also a practical mashing schedule where we actually mash down and then up again.
Well, I have to admit there weren’t as many “must read” articles as I usually find! But Kai’s post just goes to show that by assuming I wasn’t interested, I may have missed out on some technical info that might be useful in other situations. Damn my prejudices! :)
Not just for wheat beers! I can see this having applications in some Belgian styles. Could one mash this way and get more esters while fermenting at a slightly lower temperature? This would help to limit fusel alcohol production in bigger beers, while still promoting ester formation
I’ve always wondered if this is another benefit from Belgian styles using sugar, particularly glucose. The extra glucose not only helps the beer dry out, but can also promote ester formation
I don’t think that the glucode produced with this mashing schedule will dry out the beer the same way added corn sugar does. The corn sugar addition dilutes the nitrogen in the wort while the Hermann mash does not.
My comment is actually more about Belgian beers. I definitely wouldn’t want to dry a wheat beer out! The point I’m intrigued with the fact that the mantra about adding sugar is that it results in a drier beer. BUT, if you are using glucose in you Belgian beers, you are also promoting ester formation, which no one seems to ever talk about.
I’ll be brewing a wheat beer in the next month. I think I’ll give the Hermann mash a try.
Which suggests even more that the Belgians appreciate the differences that different sugars give to the finished product, beyond resulting in a beer with a dry finish
I brewed a Weissbier using said maltase- or Hermann mash last night. I started at 5:30p and was able to pitch at 12:00a. The mash was not too difficult but the biggest pain was heating from 45C to 70C which I did with direct heat and which therefore required me to stir it for 25 min. But I expected that.
We’ll see how this batch compares to the same recipe w/ a normal mash.
I did also notice that it took more acid to lower the pH of the mash to 5.5-5.6 at the end. This was actually expected since low temperature rests are known to increase the buffer capacity of the mash.
It looks like this did not work for me to give me more banana aroma. I took a sample today and detect very little banana aroma compared to the control. The beer has more clove though. This is expected since the rest at 45C is also a good ferulic acid rest temp.
It might be necessary to use a more estery Weissbier yeast. I used WY3068 which is more on the phenolic side.
So I checked the dissertation which proposed this mash and found that they also used WY3068 (a.k.a. W68) but their pitching rate (~2 M/ml) was much lower than mine (~4 M/ml). In fact mine may have been even higher. I got an inexplicable discrepancy between the number of cells counted in the well mixed starter and the cells counted in the well mixed beer.
But I have read reports of this mash working as intended.
Kai, when I follow “proper” pitching rates on Hefe/Dunkelweizens with 3068 I’ve been disappointed.
I under pitch by a little and try not to go more than 3 generations either.
Brewing a Hefe this weekend and I’ll use that mash and my pitching procedures to see what I get.
The only numbers I found were 2-4 M/ml (Kunze) or 0.3 -1 l yeast slurry per 100l wort. This slurry must be much thinner than the yeast slurry for lagers which is reported to give ~15 M/ml if about 0.5 l are added to 100l wort.
I assume that it is common to aerate to saturation with air which gives you about 8 ppm O2.
