Sort of Decoction Mash, any comments.

[Brewmarc]

I have been asked to brew a beer for an event I am organising in the summer, :party: & I have decided on a dark pilsner type lager in the style of Samual adams Boston Lager using MO pale & crystal malt. :party: I know they employ a decoction mash for this beer.
My plan is to cheat a bit with my own decotion concoction. I know the purists out there will chastise me not doing a true decoction mash for this, but my plan is to do a 2 step mash with a protein rest at 50C for 30 mins followed by a Schrification rest at 66C for 1 hour. After an initial infusion to achieve my protein rest temp I plan to draw a decoction of a calculated volume thick or thin, Im not sure yet :wha: & heat to boiling before reintroduction to produce my sachrification temp, followed by mash out sparge etc. I have done a fair few step infusion mash's in the past which I know will be fine for this but wanted to do something different & experiment. I am wondering weather keeping the grain/water ratio even throughout the mash & heating the decocted portion will produce a better flavour profile overall I am going to ferment with WLP800 with a diacetyl rest at the end & lager for a month or so before bottling. Any thoughts, comments or improvements on this greatly appreciated. :

 

[phettebs]

I am by no means a decoction expert. I have done two: a single and a double. But I learned a lot and enjoyed the process.

Everything I have read says that on your first decoction pull, you want a thicker decoction so as to leave as many of the enzymes behind to continue to do their conversion. If you take a lot of liquid with you (thin decoction) on your first pull, you will dentature them during the boiling of the decoction. If you end up taking too much on that first time, that which is left has to do all of the conversion for you in the remaining liquid.

As far as the flavor profile that is created, I think it's debatable. There are many here in the US who argue that decoction makes no difference with today's highly modified malts. Others swear by it. I think you should just try it and see what you think. It's a fair bit of work and not something that I plan to do a whole lot of in the future. But it was a good experience to try.

Also, a lot of the documentation out there says to take 1/3 of your mash for your first decoction. I, and other brewers I talked to, found that 1/3 did not get me up to my sacchrification temp. It's more like 40%. You can always not add it all back in if you took too much. Be careful of scorching the mash while boiling it!

Braukaiser is a highly technical decoction masher from one of my local boards in the US. I read his site multiple times and watched his videos on decocting before trying it myself. You can find it here:

http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.ph ... ing#Videos


Good luck!
Baz

 

[Brewmarc]

Thanks very much for the info good point about the remaining enzymes having to do all the work if I take too much liquid out, Ill definately bare this in mind. im just going to give it a go as you suguest & see what turns out thanks once again.

 

[evanvine]

Decoction + HERMS, now there's interesting; even if you take too little out to boil, you can recover the temperature.