Category:Mashing

Mashing is the brewing term for steeping malt and other grains in hot water in order to extract the starches from the grain and allow them to be converted into sugar. In all-grain brewing, the mash is where the wort is created.

Theory of Mashing

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Mash Temperatures

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Single temperature mashing

Step mashing

Mashing Procedures

Whether you choose a single or step mash, there are a number of ways to achieve your mash temperatures.

Direct heat

Infusion mashing

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Infusion mashing is the process of achieving your mash temperatures by adding measured amounts of water heated to carefully calculated temperatures to the mash.

In a single infusion mash, the mash water is added all at once and the mash is held at a single steady temperature for the entire mash. In a step infusion mash, some of the water is held back and heated to a carefully calculated temperature before being added to the main mash to raise the temperature to each additional step. In either case, an insulated mash tun, such as a converted picnic cooler mash tun, is used to keep the temperature steady without the need for direct heat.

Decoction Mashing

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Which mash schedule to choose

This question comes up quite frequently in the form of "What benefit do I get from using a more complicated mash schedule than single temperature infusion?".

Mashing needs to be seen as an extension of the malting process and what wasn't done during the malting of the grain, needs to be done during mashing. And the more modified a malt is, the less mashing steps are necessary to produce a wort suitable for brewing a quality beer. Even worse, by selecting a more intense mashing schedule for a highly modified malt certain steps, like protein conversion, can be overdone and lead to a less optimal wort composition.

Here is a list of some malts showing mashing schedules that work well for them:

• American or British 2-row (Pale malts): single infusion mash
• Durst TurboPils: single infusion mash
• Durst Pilsner: single infusion or 2 step infusion
• Briess Pilsen: 2 step infusion / decoction mash
• Weyermann Pilsner/Vienna/Munich: 2 step infusion
• home malted malt: multi step infusion / deoction mash