Mashing
Mashing
Mashing is a step in the brewing process that combines crushed Malts with hot water to convert complex starches into simple sugars that are more readily fermented. There are many variations of mashing, but the single infusion mash described below is easily done with home equipment, and suitable for most popular beer styles. During the malting process barley grains develop many enzymes that are needed for mashing. These enzymes, when heated with water in the mash, react with the starches in the malt and produce maltose. Maltose is a favorite food for yeast during fermentation. A related process called lautering runs hot water through the grain bed after the mash to extract the sugars and produce a sweet liquid called wort for brewing.
Single Infusion Mash
The Single Infusion Mash, also called the British Infusion Mash is the simplest mashing method for homebrewers to use. In an infusion mash, room temperature crushed grains are combined with a premeasured amount of hot water at a fixed temperature. By accurately calculating the volume and temperature of the water, one can reach a target temperature for the combined mash in the 148 to 158 F range. The easiest way to calculate the proper infusion volume and temperature is with an infusion calculator or brewing software such as BeerSmith. The mash is then held at that temperature usually by keeping the mash in an insulated cooler for 45-90 minutes. At this temperature, the mash will readily convert starches into sugars. You can test for conversion of sugars using an iodine test. Simply draw a small quantity of mashed grains out, add a few drops of iodine to it. If the iodine does not turn blue, then the conversion is complete.
Sparging
After the mash process is complete, the grains, water and sugar are still in suspension in the mash container, called the mash tun. The sugars are separated from the grains in a process called sparging. The mash tun typically has a false bottom or screen at the bottom with a spigot that allows the brewer to draw run-off from the bottom of the grain bed. Hot water at approximately 178 F is slowly added to the top of the grain bed, run through the bed, and drawn off the bottom through the false bottom and out the spigot to the boiling vessel. This extracts sugars from the grains and produces sweet liquid wort for boiling. The initial runnings (first few quarts) drawn during the sparge process are recirculated back through the grain bed, as the early runnings often contain grain husks, crushed material and other undesirable elements. After the initial runnings, the grain bed will act as a filter and reduce the cloudiness of the runnings. Sparging is best done slowly so that a maximum amount of sugar can be extracted from the spent grains.
See Also
External Links
- BeerSmith Brewing Software - a tool that will do your infusion calculation
