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Mini Mashing Strategy

As I posted before I am going to attempt to make 4 or 6 one gallon batches of base malt only beer at the same time.  I originally was looking to do the following: American 2-row, German Pils, English Pale Malt, Munich Malt, 50/50 Wheat/2-row and a specialty malt called ESB malt (I saw it at my LHBS and got curious).

The more I think about the process though, I think I may parse it back the first 4 instead.  The main reason is that I got the green light to do this on the kitchen stove.  With 4 burners and 4 stock pots I should be able to do this relatively faster than if I was to do it on my two burners in the garage.  My plan is straight forward.  Mash 2lbs of each malt in 2.5 qts water (164F strike temp, 1.25qt/lb).  I hope to hit a mash temp somewhere in the 154F range.  I’ll do the mashes simply in stock pots, and store them in a warmed oven for 60 minutes to hold the temp.  This method will help ensure that they all are subject to the same general temp and temp swings for the duration of the mash.

I’ll sparge each one over a stainless steel mesh colander that I have used in the past for mini-mashing and steeping grains.  I’ll rinse each mash through the colander with enough 168F water to get me to 1.5 gallons total.  Then I’ll boil each one for 60 minutes with a single Magnum charge of hops.  Sounds straight forward.  I might use the big pot and propane cooker to fire up the strike and sparge water, just for convenience and speed.  But next thing I need to do is borrow a couple 2 gallon stock pots…

BREW ON!

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4 Comments

  1. D-Form

    Wow, I was just planning the same thing but hadn’t figured out how to get them all cooking at the same time. The only difference is that I have some left over warrior instead magnum. I had your 4 base malts then a second set of experiments with 50/50 wheat, 50/50 red wheat, and a rye mix.

    My stove only has three working burners so maybe I’ll follow your strategy of heating the water in bulk to help with the mash.

  2. I was considering doing the 50/50 wheat mix, a rye mix, the ESB and maybe a light extract actually; as a second round. But it seemed like a lot of work for the first pass. If it works well for me, then I’ll definately do it again with these four examples. I am really curious to compare base malt to 50/50 wheat. Only because I have drank a lot of wheat beer, but I can’t really say I understand the wheat taste you know. I guess I just have a mental block between reading how these things taste, and actually tasting them myself.

    On the use of warrior, I think that its great. As long as its a high alpha and the same in every experimental batch then it doesn’t matter really.

  3. Take some video of the 4 burners going at the same time.

  4. D-Form

    About having the mental block when it comes to reading and tasting. I was trained in sensory analysis for seafood and we basically spent a week sniffing fish and converting our perception of what we smelled to what was described in the book, I learned that what I called sweet was what was described as sour milk by the experts.

    This experiment will help with that as well I hope.

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