Mashing confusion

[tschmidlin]

@sharg54

I haven’t learned the little quote thing but I’ed like to respond to Dannys earlier statement.

“Just to be clear, I’m not against decoction, either.  I’m against expending effort that doesn’t have a payoff!”

Personaly I think there is a payoff in spending the time to step mash. After all this is where the subject was started at and seams to have been side tracked.

First off you get a better conversion from solids to liquids because the enzymes that do that have more time to work and you can also build up the amino acids ( or what ever they are)  that feed the yeast so you don’t have to add things to help the yeast along as it’s already there. This boils down to better extraction with less grain used and additives required thus money saved, just a few bucks but now a days a few bucks is a few bucks.

Secondly you can control things like alcohol content and body of the brew by adjusting your heats and times you spend at the various temps. If I want a higher alcohol content in my stout I can stay at a lower temp a little longer before I raise it up. If I want lower maybe I don’t go to the lower temp at all I make the choice. With single step you get what you get. Mash in at 158 and you get higher body and lower alcohol and that’s it.

Lastly I have to use less water to batch sparge and take less of a chance of washing out things that cause off flavors in the beer because most of my water is already in the turn. I don’t have to worry about trashing my ph during the sparge because I’m not doing it that long.

Expending energy is a matter of opinion and personal preference. What one man calls expending effort with no payoff  another one calls time well spent, money saved and problems avoided.

Sorry for the interruption feel free to go on with your topic.  :)

I’m not saying don’t do it your way, but you need better reasons.  The main reason I use nutrient is for the trace minerals, step mashing isn’t going to increase those.  Alcohol content and body are closely dependent on each other for a given grist, and what you’re describing can be achieved by changing your single infusion temperature and/or time.  Also, you’re using the same amount of water to batch sparge, unless you’re saying that step mashing reduces the amount of water the grain absorbs.  And with more water in your first batch sparge, you’re actually more likely to extract off flavors, not less likely.  The efficiency might be your best selling point, but are you sure yours is really that much better than a single infuser?  I’m not convinced.