I’ve been looking at a few recipes lately that involve a protein rest. I was wondering if I could mash it at that temp, then drain the mashwater/wort into a kettle and heat it up on the stove. I figure I wouldn’t have to go much above my next step target due to the grain bed being pre-heated and I shouldn’t have to go anywhere near a boil so caramelization should be low. My concern would be the affect on enzymes.
Any input is greatly appreciated.
Just mash thick for the first infusion and add a second infusion to get you to your second rest.
Sounds good. Much easier too. Thanks
Just say no to a protein rest. With the highly modified malts we have today, it’s almost never needed and can be detrimental. Base the decision to do a p rest on the specific malt you use, not a recipe.
Heating just a portion of the mashing water would likely mean that you would overheat and denature the enzymes. If you insist on stepping without adding more plain hot water, then I suggest that decoction is a better way. You are heating a mass from the mash, but its the part without most of the enzymes since the enzymes stay in the wort.
The best answer is D:
Totally agree.
Martin is also correct. Boiling a thick decoction is better than what the OP described, which is actually a thin decoction. With thin decoction, you’ll kill most of your enzymes, so conversion and attenuation may be adversely impacted.
You really need to just skip the protein rest, unless you’re hell-bent on finding out just how detrimental it is with 21st century malts.
I like the Keep It Simple method… Avoid the protein rest all together, 
Protein rests generally are not needed today, as those will hurt head retention. Even with most German malts this is not a required step, the maltster did the work for you making the malt.
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Infusion_Mashing
Lets say you want a little insurance using some German malts, some say to rest for 5 or 10 minutes on the high end of Protease temp range, 131-133F doing a thick mash, then go to 145F for the Beta rest with boiling water. Then you might have room to infuse to get to the 158F Alpha rest, but you will be tapped our on mash tun volume. You can then pull the liquid and decoct the “thin part” to bring it to 168-170F for mash out. A friend often does steps and will do the last decoction step to get to mash out.
I have done a lot of direct fired step mashes, those work if you have the right system. If you have a cooler, and have a pump and a kettle with a ball valve, you could use it as a direct fired grant, recirculating back to the cooler. I did this once and the beer turned out fine - just dont overheat the liquid in the grant. I did this as I had a lot of malt in a 72 qt cooler, was out of room, and the temp was low. Like I said, the parts to do this were on hand and it worked.
Kinda like a HERMS arrangement, Jeff, just direct firing, right?
Yes, you add heat with the fire and keep the flow high enough that you don’t denature the enzymes with high temperature.
side note, on a lot of the BJCP writtens that I grade I see people using extended protein rests, and very cool ones at that, on the recipe question. Sometimes I have to question whether they are spouting something they read in a book, or if they’ve actually had success with this method.
I personally use brief, warm protein rests quite often, AND always use decoction for certain styles (I named one beer “Whatever Denny, I taste the decoction”) ;D
I’ll reiterate - To each their own. Whatever gets one the result they want - go for it.
cheers–
–Michael
If you really want to try a portein rest, go for it. This is what I’d suggest too. As most people have said, it can kill head retention. This happened with a buddy in my club. You could always try it and report back too.
If you’re concerned about head, and who isn’t, keep your “protein” rest above 130. Every brewer in Belgium does this rest with well modified malt and gets some of the best looking (one could say, Belgian) lacing around.
+1
As far as the cooler stepping goes, I had no problem in my test mashes when I was dialing in my equipment. Like others have said, if you mash in stiff to account for the added water, you should have no problem doing 3-4 steps.
Is this homebrew specific? I’ve never been able to wrap my brain around the fact that so many continental brewers still step mash as a general rule. My assumption would be the difference in scale between homebrewing and commercial breweries holds the key.
Just curious. I’m a big fan of continental Belgian beers and I use malts such as Dingemans and Weyermann like many of the breweries over there.
Not looking to stir the pot (this topic always receives mixed results). I’m just curious to know if this is just detrimental on our scale.
Some German Brewers still do decoctions, and the brew house is set up for that with slurry pumps.
Other German brewers have gone to step mashes to save energy, and time.
As far as I can tell, Weyermann does not have a huge part of the malt market in Germany. They have the one maltings in Bamberg. There are other maltsters that have 3 maltings, Avangard has 4.
I guess the confusion may be that a rest at the upper bound of the protein range is often seen as a first step to many recipes. 132 is a common one.
Maybe it isn’t correct to call that a protein rest?
I agree that it is likely a maltster thing. Also likely to be a temperature thing. The number I see thrown around most often for homebrewers and which I have used is 122 F. Perhaps at 130+ F the effect is not detrimental. Possible.
An short rest at 133f is what is often recommended.
http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Infusion_Mashing