everett mash

Beer Recipes
1

I want to brew the BYO Hill Farmstead Everett clone. About the mash the article says the following:

“When crushing the grains keep the dark roasted grains(crystal-90,the chocolate malt and the roasted barley) separate from the other grains. Mix the pale malt, dextrine malt and caramalt with 20qts.(19L) to achieve a target mash temperature of159°F (71°C). Hold for 20 minutes, then mix in the darker grains. Hold for 5 minutes and begin the mash out procedure or lauter phase”.

OG=1.088, FG=1.030.

I have never seen this before,  mashing at 71C, and for only 30 minutes. Why is it done like this? I have never tasted Everett, but it’s supposed to be very creamy, and have a perfect equilibrium between sweetness and roastedness (if that is a word  :P)

2

Interesting. I get that the darker grains go in later to make the roastiness subtle, not too harsh. Both the high mash temp and short mash time would result in more unfermentables and therefore more body and sweetness, I’m just surprised that the mash is that short. It seems pretty risky in terms of efficiency and hitting a consistent starting gravity.
I’m guessing the grain bill is pretty big for the gravity to make up for lack of efficiency?

3

adding the roasted grains late in the mash is primarily to help prevent too much pH drop in the mash. roasted grains will drop the pH a lot so if you have soft water and don’t want to add a bunch of salts to up the alkalinity you can do this. The problem is that you then potentially have too low a final beer pH because the dark malts are still going to lower the pH when you add them so you either risk a thin, acrid roast character or you add salts to the kettle or even the keg (ask me how I know).

Now, cold steeping dark grains is a different story in my opinion. when you soak the dark grains in room temp water for a couple hours you will extract the color and some pleasant roast flavors with little to no acid or acridness. similar to cold steeped coffee. The resulting liqour can be added to the kettle at 5 minutes to go to sanitize.

the 30 minute mash time probably has more to do with it being adapted from a pro system recipe. when it takes 20-60 minutes to lauter there is plenty of time for conversion to complete.

either that or they are going for a wort that is not very fermentable which with that high an FG is possible

4

Many commercial breweries mash high, as the base malt is North American 2-row, as is this recipe. The NA malts are called “hot” in that the Diastatic Power is very high, and there is enough Beta Amalyse to get the job done even at temperatures where it is denaturing.

5

Good info.

6

I have experience with cold steeping, so that’s going to be OK. It’s just that extremely short mash time. Now, to be honest, I already brewed a first test batch with extract. Mashed the usual 60 minutes at 68C before mashing out. The beer fermented down to 1.028. I do think the technique has to do to keep the porter sweet, but looking at my test batch, would the short mash time make a lot of difference?

7

I would just conduct your mash as usual and add the dark grains with 5 minutes remaining

8

If I were to do this one, I would target 157-158 F, and check for conversion. Beta denatures at 158F, so this would be more conservative. You might try a couple of test mashes at 158 and 160 F and see if there is much difference.

9

FWIW, I recently mashed the same recipe at 153 and 168.  No difference in OG, FG, or taste.  The base was Rahr 2 row pale.

10

Thanks Denny, that’s what I’ll do then. Btw, did you cold-steep or just add the dark grains at the end?

11

[quote=“denny, post:9, topic:18235, username:denny”]

That Rahr dries out no matter what the mash temp it seems.

12

Flicking through IPA by Mitch Steele I came across the following mash schedule for Goose Island India Pale Ale:
25 minute rest at 71 degrees C, raise mash temp to 77 degrees C and hold for 10 minutes.