Heh, okay, I admit it - it’s a silly title. But I’m a fan of this (admittedly unpopular) method. It’s not for everyone or every beer, but I feel like decoction mashing has its place - even if that’s just with masochistic brewers like me.
Anyway, full writeup is here.
Oh, I am SO going to disagree! Being lazy, I hate doing anything that doesn’t improve my beer. I haven’t found that decoction does that.
I’m just going to leave this quote from the article here.
[quote]Indeed, this is one of those nigh-religious debates in homebrewing. Some brewers will tell you that there just is no point in employing a decoction, that you can achieve an identical beer with a little melanoiden malt. Others hold that there is something special in a decocted beer, some little touch of magic that you just can’t perfectly duplicate in any other way.
It probably comes as no surprise that I fall into the latter camp. Understand, I love melanoiden malt; I feel like it can add a lot to almost any beer where maltiness is desired. However, I also believe that decoction does something that you just cannot exactly replicate with any mere specialty malt. That being said, the purpose of this article (tongue in cheek title aside) is not to try to convince you either way; rather, my intention is to simply walk you through the process of a decoction mash, if you are so inclined to perform one.
[/quote]
I’ve always thought it would be fun to do a brew day that relies upon decoction, no thermometers allowed.
To me, I don’t care if decoction makes any difference or not, it’s always something I’ve wanted to try. I enjoy the brew day process for a “regular” beer, this has always seemed like a fun way to mix things up.
Yes, I realize this is another statement that contradicts my signature. 
I feel you, Phil. The whole “traditional brewing” art stuff is attractive to me, too. I haven’t considered a no thermometer beer… now, I am.
Since one of the main reasons we do decoction mashes is to increase melanoidins and malt flavors by boiling the decoction, how is that different than boiling in the kettle? Does the presence of the grain help it?
I’m not at all heavily versed in the scientific side of decoctions. My understanding is that yes, boiling the grain does help. Fro what I have read, boiling the grain does make the starches more freely available for conversion, and it makes sense that boiling the grain would help to release those melanoidens; personal experience says that you get color from decocting fairly quickly (as compared to boiling the overall wort for a similar amount of time).
I’m kinda on the fence with the decoction debate. I’ve been going back and forth brewing with and without and haven’t really come to any concrete conclusion if one is better than the other. I guess I’ll just have to keep brewing and expirementing which is part of this fun hobby.
Maybe decoction works better if you have the right malt? Many German/Czech breweries have their own Malting’s and can fine tune their malt to their process. I’d like to try some truly under modified malt in a decoction but can’t find the stuff.
I enjoy using floor malted pils with a decoction, but it’s still not truly under modified.
A few comments…
some guys in my club tried that…the beer sucked.
Melanoidins are not “released”. They are formed by Maillard reactions. They are colors, not flavors.
I’ve used that malt as well with good results. I also heard that Rahr Old World Pils is a Moravian barley grown and malted here in the USA and is under modified but so far I haven’t been able to find it.
Melanoidins are not “released”.
Good point. Bad statement on my part.
Melanoidins are colors, not flavors
True. I’m incorrectly using the term to refer to the products of maillard reactions, which do create flavor contributions.
I’ll freely enjoy that I do enjoy the “crafty” feeling of decoctions, which is a big reason I do them. I also admit that one can get a nigh identical beer by using a little melanoiden malt.
I will submit that the recipe brewed - and perhaps certain ingredients themselves - have a lot to do with whether or not one can taste the outcome of a decoction (as in comparing decoction versus non decoction, with no specialty malt used in the non decoted version).
But again, note that this article is about how to do a decoction, and maybe to cover some common gotchas. It’s not meant to talk you into decocting.
There’s definitely a good chance of that happening. It’s still an intriguing idea, and if it fails it wouldn’t be the first batch I’ve dumped.
Decoction lends itself to missing rest temps a bit, but if everything else is done right, if you have a solid process in place, you ought to be able to do one without a thermometer and still make great beer.
That said, I record so many little details into Beersmith when I brew. Temperature to the tenth of a degree, taken from three different spots. 10 minute pH, to a hundredth place. 60 minute pH, to a hundredth place. Salt and acid additions to decimal parts of a gram.
Going with no temp readings might drive me a little nuts.
I brew a lot of German styles and have done several decoctions (single, double, triple), I rarely if ever do them these days mainly because, like Denny, I cannot discern much, if any, difference in the final product.
But also, similar to Denny, I’m lazy about things like this when I don’t think it’s a big flavor contributor. So nowadays, when I get that rare, wild decoction hair, I do a single decoction at mash out. I pull enough grist to fit into an oversized stainless mixing bowl. I drop that mixing bowl (with some loose foil over it to keep grain from clogging things up) into a pressure cooker, and let it go at 15 psi for 15 minutes. No stirring necessary and it works like a charm.
I’ve tried to hit temperature rests with decoction and have concluded that it’s for the birds. Blichmann TOP is much better at this. 
At a recent club brew tasting almost everyone decocted their hefeweizens and most did fly sparging. The final consensus taste results selected a non-decocted, batch sparged beer as the winner. Admittedly, all three of the top beers were really good, whether decocted or not (no one was told whether a beer was single infusion mashed or batch sparged). The tasting was not BJCP judged, but the tasting participants were mostly BJCP ranked.
I appreciate the decoction allure, but I am not yet convinced that it makes a difference in taste…though I prefer a local Helles that is made commercially near here that is decocted. So, go figure.
I’ve been thinking about brewing the tafelbier from your book. Why is there decoction? Blame Drew?
Blame both of us…neither does decoctions or believes they have any affect on flavor. But it’s a traditional way of doing that (so Drew says!) so we put it in. Our thoughts on decoction are also in the book, so peole can choose whether to do it or not.
