Stepped mash in a Robobrew (or other all in 1)

[RGeats]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has a good technique for carrying out a stepped mash in a Robobrew or similar. I tried one when doing a witbier, and found it took a long time to ramp up between temps, probably negating any benefit.

Reading a recipe for a German lager involving a 10min rest at 53 then 45mins at 63. I can imagine going from 53 to 63 would take 30 mins or so.
I was thinking you could mash in with a lower water volume then add hotter water to help get the temp up quicker, or lift the mash pipe out and heat the water below to a higher strike temp.
Has anyone tried anything like this, and how did you get on?
Cheers

 

[foxy]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has a good technique for carrying out a stepped mash in a Robobrew or similar. I tried one when doing a witbier, and found it took a long time to ramp up between temps, probably negating any benefit.

Reading a recipe for a German lager involving a 10min rest at 53 then 45mins at 63. I can imagine going from 53 to 63 would take 30 mins or so.
I was thinking you could mash in with a lower water volume then add hotter water to help get the temp up quicker, or lift the mash pipe out and heat the water below to a higher strike temp.
Has anyone tried anything like this, and how did you get on?
Cheers

Unless you have bought some undermodified malt there s no need for a step mash. What is the grain bill?

 

[RGeats]

I haven't bought anything as yet but was just browsing and it got me thinking.
Grain bill as below :
Weyermann® Bohemian Pilsner Malt
Weyermann® Vienna Malt
Weyermann® Carapils®
Dingemans Biscuit Malt

 

[foxy]

Then you will be better off with a step mash with the Bohemian Pilsner malt this has come up before on here I believe there are two varieties one is floor malted.
Can you not dial in more wattage throughout the steps?

 

[MikeBusby]

I’m surprised that your all in one would take 30 minutes to increase 10C. I’m sure my Beacon Brewster would take less than 5 minutes for that.

 

[RGeats]

Yeah I'd use both elements, still fairly slow to get the flow through the grain and heat it all up.

 

[RGeats]

I’m surprised that your all in one would take 30 minutes to increase 10C. I’m sure my Beacon Brewster would take less than 5 minutes for that.

With the grain in the basket?

 

[foxy]

With the Beacon, Guten, Hopcat etc it is east to dial up to a higher wattage. But even at 1700 watts is doesn't take 10 mins to go from 66 to 77 C.
You could get a different Pilsner malt and just do a single infusion.

 

[Hop_it]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has a good technique for carrying out a stepped mash in a Robobrew or similar. I tried one when doing a witbier, and found it took a long time to ramp up between temps, probably negating any benefit.

Reading a recipe for a German lager involving a 10min rest at 53 then 45mins at 63. I can imagine going from 53 to 63 would take 30 mins or so.
I was thinking you could mash in with a lower water volume then add hotter water to help get the temp up quicker, or lift the mash pipe out and heat the water below to a higher strike temp.
Has anyone tried anything like this, and how did you get on?
Cheers

I now use the Brewzilla 3.1, which I bought early last year. I've had a few issues with very slow circulation of the wort, which has so far put me off attempting a stepped mash. I saw this thread, and was curious to see what others have suggested. I joined an Australian home brew forum before joining this one, and asked a lot of questions there about using the Brewzilla 3.1. The collective wisdom of the Australian brewing community was that the flow problems were most likely due to the crush of the grist being too fine. I've since bought a grain mill and have started experimenting with different roller gaps. I've also tried including some rice hulls to improve the flow. And so far so good. The reason for mentioning this is that I don't think that there is a hope in hell of doing a precise step mash if the freshly heated wort does not transfer that heat (quickly) to the grain bed. And it can only do that if the circulation of the wort is good. The temperature of the liquid adjacent to the thermocouple (which is right next to the heater) is not that relevant until everything reaches equilibrium. Unfortunately I'm still not yet convinced that a step mash is easily achievable using the heaters alone, despite the fact that the control system allows the user to set a stepped temperature profile. My gut feeling is that you might have to help it along a bit with some additional hot water, and a lot of stirring.

Aside from that I wondered if you might be interested in an xl chart which works out the (theoretical) rate of heating of the liquid from any chosen temperature to a higher temperature for various different power inputs. The link below will take you to the download file.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/threads/boiler-timing-chart-spreadsheet-for-strike-water.11115/
NB - The file is a compressed zip file which will open in Windows XL or similar without any issues. However, there is something odd about it, in that you cannot save any changes without it becoming inoperative. I messed around with it to try to solve this issue, but eventually gave up. Also, if you want to move the file to another location on your PC, you will have to carry out a copy/paste rather than save the open file to a different location.

 

[RGeats]

Lovely thank you for your comprehensive reply. That's my feeling about the whole thing too, which is why I was asking for others experience.
I'll have a look at the spreadsheet and see what I think. I think stirring might be the best bet, bit like an extended mash in.

Cheers

 

[MikeBusby]

With the grain in the basket?

Yes, but I am doing another batch this weekend, so I will time it for you.

 

[Simon_ddl]

Hi everyone, i've tried a step twice now in my brewzilla (NEIPAs, oat heavy) and had the same problem. As the temperature gauge is at the bottom i was checking the temp in the middle with a separate thermometer. It essentially took me 2 hours to get from 50 to 67oc with near constant stiring. I guess the issue is that i'm doing step because of the oats which reduces the through flow, even with rice hulls.

Interested to hear how people got on with pouring in the very hot water at the top - did this leach any tannins? id also be worried that this may kill off any of the enzymes...

Any idea if you lifted out the malt pipe, let it drain for 10 mins whilst heating up with wort to slightly above the next step, then dropping it back in would work?

 

[Hop_it]

Hi everyone, i've tried a step twice now in my brewzilla (NEIPAs, oat heavy) and had the same problem. As the temperature gauge is at the bottom i was checking the temp in the middle with a separate thermometer. It essentially took me 2 hours to get from 50 to 67oc with near constant stiring. I guess the issue is that i'm doing step because of the oats which reduces the through flow, even with rice hulls.

Interested to hear how people got on with pouring in the very hot water at the top - did this leach any tannins? id also be worried that this may kill off any of the enzymes...

Any idea if you lifted out the malt pipe, let it drain for 10 mins whilst heating up with wort to slightly above the next step, then dropping it back in would work?

I've still not tried a step mash yet on my Brewzilla because I've not brewed anything recently that required it. However, if you haven't seen it already take a look at : Anna's Brewdays.
DocAnna appears to have made it work, but I'm not sure if her solution would work so well with a lot of oats in the mash ????? Possibly a very wet mash would help to overcome the stickiness of the oats. But I guess that there's only one way to find out.
The hot water addition(s) to raise the temperature would best be treated like sparge water, i.e. it would make sense to adjust the pH with a suitable acid to reduce the risk of tannin extraction.
I suspect that the risk of destroying the enzymes to the point where there is not sufficient for adequate conversion is minimal. I say this because traditional decoction mashing used extensively by the Germans involves taking as much as 1/3 of the mash (including grist) and then boiling it for various periods of time before returning it to the remaining mash to increase the temperature to the next step.
Your idea of lifting up the malt pipe is interesting, but I can see a couple of problems . . . . . The grist sitting in the malt pipe would immediately start cooling down, and you still have the issue (when you drop the malt pipe back in) of getting that hot liquid to dissipate evenly through the grist to heat it up to the next step. But maybe with sufficient stirring it would work. It's probably worth a try.