Conventional wisdom says to mash low for a crisp and dry beer, mash high for a sweet and chewy beer. Since I began brewing all grain, this is the rule I followed, and it always seemed to work, though I couldn’t help but wonder if mash temp really makes all that big of a difference? To test it out, I split a batch of BierMuncher’s Centennial Blonde and put this one to the test. Results are in!
amount of hops/IBU in a beer can certainty mask sweetness or increase perception of dryness.
do this for a pils-interested to see results.
I’m kind of surprised you couldn’t tell the difference. Whenever I’ve had a beer that seemed “too sweet” it had a higher FG. the difference though is that my few instances of high FG were not due to high mash temp. it was usually high OG, too much crystal/roasted malts, or a yeast that didn’t attenuate as much as I expected. maybe there is something magical about the sugars created by the higher mash temp. this makes me want to give something like this a try.
loads of crystal and higher FG can be really unappealing and cloying sweetness takes over.
the recipe he used doesn’t have that working against it:
10-Gallon Batch
Batch Size: 11.00 gal
Boil Size: 13.69 gal
Estimated OG: 1.039 SG
Estimated Color: 3.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 21.6 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Ingredients:
14.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
1.25 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
0.50 oz Centennial [9.50%] (55 min)
0.50 oz Centennial [9.50%] (35 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [7.80%] (20 min)
0.50 oz Cascade [7.80%] (5 min)
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) (Hydrated)
Agreed, but there aren’t many hops at all in this beer, 1 oz per 5 gallon, and it certainly isn’t very bitter.
agreed- just a general statement not specific to this recipe.
some beers are really not so different when FG aren’t the same- i’ve found it hard to discern that also.
Others- well much more discernible to me at least. Ive made some pilsners in early days that finished 1.013,1,014 and that just didn’t cut it for me…lacking that crisp dryness and leaving you quenched and ready for another.
Correct.
Quote from Denny on an other thread:
What I think is going on here is that higher alcohol compensates to some extent for lower sugar, so the drier beers still tastes as full and sweet as the other. I think the two beers might have tasted different if you’d started with different OGs but used different mash temps to end up with the same abv but different FGs. But that’s just a hunch.
As you say in the write-up, it’s great news for people experimenting with low abv beers, which I do quite a lot. Also great news for people with dodgy thermometers who don’t hit the right strike/mash temp - clearly it doesn’t matter much.
Great exbeeriment, keep them coming.
Interesting theory, perhaps some sort of alcohol compensation is at play.
+1 totally agree
Did you do any follow up gravity readings? 6 days with a 1 day break between FG readings seems quick. 1056 can keep working pretty cold. I wonder if the 1.014 didn’t drop another 3 or 4 points in the keg. If you still have some left try degassing it and taking another reading.
Me either… we’ll just have to see!
I always take 2-3 hydrometer measurements to confirm FG is stable, 2-3 days apart. It was for these beers, no change at all.
I would not be surprised at all. I have taken to mashing my Scotch ale relatively low (~149F) for the last few batches. It definitely finishes dryer, but there is still the perception of being full-bodied.
This is what I was going by…
“I took the first hydrometer measurement once signs of fermentation activity had waned, then confirmed it hadn’t changed the following day, 6 since brewing the beer. The .009 SG difference was initially pretty shocking to me though ultimately left me feeling confident such a highly discussed process component actually did what it’s purported to do– science works! I proceeded to cold crash, fine with gelatin, and package in kegs.”
I’m not poopooing the eXbmt, just puzzling over things that may have happened. Frankly, I think it would be awesome if there was proof that you need drastically different mash temps to make noticeable differences in the glass.
Just degassed and took hydro measure, took a bit to get all CO2 out and warm up, but no change.
Jim owes you a beer. 8)
I’ll need an address LOL
Well cool Marshall. Interesting findings
Interesting post from the reddit subforum on this exbeeriment:
“If the sugars left are mostly dextrines, then the beer simply won’t be sweet - I’ve made diy cycling hydration/nutrition mix with 60g/L maltodextrine, and this is really un-sweet; it’s kind of somewhere between very dilute sugar solution and very dilute starch water, which I guess makes sense. I then add 30g/L fructose, and that’s all you can taste. 9 points is less than 30g/L maltodextrine, so I’m really not surprised it barely has any flavour impact.”
So maybe a high mash temp just leaves a load of tasteless dextrines that hydrometers detect better than taste buds.
That was exactly my thought when I was reading this. The yeast is going to eat up all the simple sugars that would taste sweet, and leave only the relatively flavorless dextrins behind. I quickly gave up on using maltodextrin in my extract batches because I never noticed a difference in the finished beer.
It would be interesting to see this xBmt repeated with a low attenuating yeast like Windsor. If you have a yeast that already leaves a bit more fermentables behind than others, maybe that would be enough to notice a flavor difference. I also wonder whether using a large amount of crystal malt would lead to a more noticeable difference as well.
Another factor to consider is that tasters might find it hard to discriminate between drinks after the first mouthful of beer has coated their taste buds and muddled their palates. There are lots of well known studies showing that the outcomes of wine competitions are little better than random -
Bias and confabulation clearly play a large role, distorting judges’ perceptions (just as they distort homebrewers’ perceptions of their processes). But I wonder if muddled palates are also involved. If you asked people to blind taste-test slightly different commercial pale ales, for instance, would they be able to tell the difference? Would it help if they rinse their mouths out between samples? Does the alcohol numb taste buds?
There are so few statistically significant results from the exbeeriments that I even wonder whether those are due to chance (95% significance tests generate false positives 5% of the time) and whether beer tasters can never tell roughly similar samples apart when taken in quick succession.