I have been doing a 30 min boil of the decoction for my marzen and dunkel. I have a bock planned for Monday and am considering a longer decoction boil. Any thoughts?
I never go longer than 45 min. Not because I have data that it stops making a difference, but because any longer seems too long.
Kai
I have never read anything that ever stated a professional brewer doing anything longer than 45 min. 30 min. is plenty long enough IMO.
I boil my decoctions for 20 minutes or until I THINK I may be getting a burn on the bottom of the pot (despite constant stirring).
It is better to stop then and not even try to continue.
Fred
I’m more in the 15 minute camp. 10 minutes at 150 or so, then quickly up to boiling, 15 minutes there.
FWIW, an experiment I did showed that a single decoction with a 30 min. boil was not the most preferred beer in a blind tasting. You can read about it here, starting on pg. 25…
http://www.ahaconference.org/presentations/2008/DennyConn.pdf
Darn Denny,
You spoil all the fun.
Kevin, who presented the Decoction topic at the Baltimore NHC, reached a slightly different conclusion after blind tastings at our club meetings. He brewed several traditionally decocted beer styles with one beer decocted and one beer modified with a 10% aromatic malt addition to see if there was a difference. On one beer the Decocted beer had a decided preference, On another the modified recipe was prefered. On the remainder (4 or 5) there was no decided preference. From a blind taste preference point of view, there was no decided preference between the decocted and the non-decocted versions.
Sometime I want to plan a long weekend of brewing and do a side by side test decoction vs no decoction for myself. I guess i have a hard time believing that such a process doesn’t add anything. Considering the process, the intensified mashing process, actual boiling of the grains, plus looking at all the proteins and mud (tieg is it called?) leftover in the mashtun that would normally end up in the brewpot, it seems like it would HAVE to make some sort of difference in the final product.
But I have yet to do the side by side for myself. Perhaps it does nothing. Perhaps its just the extra work put into the brewday that the decoction believers are tasting.
Punishing the grains with some boiling seems “right” though ;D
You don’t have to brew a side-by-side on the same day or weekend. It’s nice if you can, but if you can control lots of the process parameters you can brew “side-by-sided” one or two weeks apart. That’s what I do. The most difficult factor to control might be yeast. But you can use dry yeast for that.
Kai
I ended up doing a 30 minute boil of the thick decoction then a 5 min boil for the mashout decoction. Thankfully the rest at 160 softened it up a bit so I didn’t kill myself stirring it!
finished at 1.067 (my hydro reads 3 points heavy for some reason…)
I personally wouldn’t bother with a decoction if it’s boiled less than an hour. No hard data to back this up, just my tastebuds. Two hours is even better, IMO. FWIW, you really shouldn’t have to stir constantly. If you do, your decoction is likely too thick. The pic posted above is WAY too thick, IMO.
Yeah, that pic does look kinda scary ha ha That was right after scooping it in, so the grain must have been piled up a little bit, trust me it did have some liquid in there (or I would have added some!) a quick sacc rest loosened it up a lot more. Once it was boiling I just gave it a quick stir once in awhile.
Cool. Yeah, a sacc rest will definitely loosen it up. 