Did you get a chance to try the decoction experiment beers we poured in Oakland? There was a decocted bock, one made with melanoidin, and one without melanoidin. There was noticeable differences according to the crowd at NHC who were tasting them blind. I don’t remember the numbers, Tim Hayner ran everything.
Yeah, I did taste them and Tim sent me the results. I can’t recall which I preferred, but I seem to remember that the results didn’t show the decocted beer was far preferred. Am I remembering wrong?
Not lazy. From what you go through in brewing with all the cleaning and prep work and such lazy would be my last thoughts. More on the line of missing out on something. I’m not the best speaker and this is a learning thing for me. I have to admit it’s giving me a lot to think about and consider but that’s what teaches. Am I over doing it? It would not be the first time. Am I hard nosed and stuck in what I do? Not a chance but I am learning and that’s the real point for me. ;D
But have you had decocted and non-decocted versions of the same beer from the same brewer? It may have simply been the fact that the brewer made the difference.
Kai
I think you’re right, the decocted one was preferred but it was close to the melanoidin one. However it was correctly identified as the decocted one by a large majority, it was not confused with the melanoidin one, so melanoidin and decoctions are not completely interchangeable for side by side tasting of the same recipe. It might be just a matter of taste, you either prefer melanoidin or prefer decocted. On the other hand I don’t think it was tightly enough controlled to say that for sure, it’s also possible that a recipe adjustment could have made one or the other a clearer favorite or made them less distinguishable from each other.
But are you considering that I (and others) have tested what you advocate and determined that we’re not missing anything? If I could demonstrate to myself that it made demonstrably better beer, I’d do it. It’s a hobby and I want to do the best I can, so if step mashes and decoctions did that, I’d be doing it. I still do those just to be certain I’m not missing anything. Just last weekend, I made a German pi;s using a beta/alpha step mash. I want to know what’s what, not be guided by my own prejudices. Have you done that kind of test? Have you brewed back to back batches of the same beer using 2 different techniques and then doing a blind triangle tasting to determine if there’s a difference? That’s all I really ask of anyone who advocates this. If you do that and fine that you consistently prefer beers made with one technique or the other, then you have a valid reason to continue with that technique. Otherwise, you’re simply guessing.
In a recent article on alts in BYO (IIRC), Horst Dornbusch, long a proponent of decoction and traditional German brewing techniques, said that he no longer feels that decoction makes a difference. He attributed the flavors to the malts used, not the decoction process.
- Yes
- [personally I’m not for or against decoction] It’s very possible even with my answer to the first question; I can see this particular brewer subconsciously putting extra effort into his decoction batch. Another possibility is that my palate picks up on decocted beer while missing character(s) that your (or anyone else) palate detects.
This is a subject that I’m still toying with and haven’t reached any concrete personal conclusions.
Just to be clear, I’m not against decoction, either. I’m against expending effort that doesn’t have a payoff! Anyway, did you do a blind tasting? was it a triangle tasting? I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s really the only way to get somewhat objective results.
Same here.
I have talked to German brew masters who said that decoction has little impact on taste. In addition to that on tours, targeted at the common audience, it is difficult to get a good answer on this topic. There is a lot of pride in traditional brewing techniques and what brewer wants to admit that they are doing something that that has only little impact on the final product. Similar to AB’s use of beechwood chips which could easily be replaced by a stainless steel matrix or completely be eliminated w/o affecting the product.
Kai
- Yeah I know and mostly agree with your basic stance.
- No the tastings I’m refering to were not scientific, just sampling of brew with fellow home brewers. I agree with your thoughts and would like to do further experiments. I still feel that the differences between all of our palates can have a huge effect, that has been my experience while sitting on a tasting panel although we never had decocted beers to try.
This has been a great discussion. cheers, j
when I was doing research after my decoction experiment, I heard from beer writer Lew Bryson. He had been to Weinstephan (I probably butchered that!) and a brewing professor there said that they had a tasting panel try decocted and non decocted version of their weizen. Most of the tasters found no difference. The professor claimed that there was probably something wrong with the panel!
That’s hilarious!
But I have trouble reconciling it with Tim’s decoction experiments, because he did a batch that had identical ingredients as the decocted batch and it was noticeably different.
An Oktoberfest without a decoction is just another mediocre beer.
However, in the decoction experiment I did, many of the beers with identical ingredients were found to have no noticeable differences and a significant number of tasters misidentified which was which.
Maybe, maybe not…I’d have to test that to say for certain.
Interesting, because he found the opposite. I’ll have to bug him for details, maybe there will be a clue in what he did.
Not entirely on topic expect as it pertain to mashing in general, but I’ve often thought that it would be preferable from a digestibility standpoint to have the alpha amylase work first, followed by the beta. Then you’d break the long chains into smaller ones before letting the alpha chew from many more ends instead of fewer longer ones. I guess thats going on in a single infusion more than a step mash, so I do single infusion and rarely do decoctions. And I understadn that the beta doesn’t stay active at the temps favoring alpha, so I really cant do a backwards decoction.
At least not until you figure out how to negate the laws of physics!
I got the details from Tim, the full thing is here:
But the main problem is these were brewed on 3 different systems by 3 different brewers, so it’s essentially meaningless without other controls.
Anyway, I feel like decoctions make a difference in my beers, but I haven’t brewed back to back. Looks like I need to now. :-\