Mashout

[E J Gumby]

Hi All,

I'm new to BIAB and All Grain, and I may be a bit thick, but what is meant by the term "Mashout"
I've seen it all over the place but I'm not entirely sure what it refers to.

Silly question possibly, but all answers gratefully accepted.

Cheers

EJ

[Hanglow]

It's when you raise the temperature of the mash at the end. this has two main benefits- it makes the first running less viscous and it denatures the enzymes in the mash

I don't bother personally as i get a good flow from mashtun to copper without needing to raise the temp and it only takes a few minutes to transfer, then I batch sparge with water hot enough to accomplish the same thing

[Kev888]

Yep, it can help the run-off in a mash tun, and particularly if you fly sparge it helps take some of the weight off the shoulders of the sparge liquor wrt raising the grain temperature. But its an extra complication for (IMO) a relatively minor gain and so I personally wouldn't bother unless I had a recirculating system that made it very easy. To my way of thinking, there'd be less benefit with BIAB which is not prone to run-off problems, and if you overdid things with the temperature or didn't stir sufficiently there could be disadvantages (like extracting undesirable flavours from the grain).

The concept behind stopping the enzyme activity is to stop further changes in the sugars being produced, at the same consistent point in every brew. However, you'll be bringing the boiler up to temperature pretty soon in any case, which will denature the enzymes then. The delay is usually quite small at homebrew scales so (again IMO) not worth bothering too much about.

Though thats just an opinion, and these do vary - some people are great fans of mashing out.

[Jim]

As said above, slight advantages but not enough to be worth the bother unless you have a RIMS/HERMS system that allows you to heat up the mash easily.

For users of an insulated mash-tun system (e.g. me) it's not worth it.

[Aleman]

The concept of a mash out comes from the US where they have taken what happens in a commercial brewery and extended it to the home brew environment . . .unfortunately as most of the books and literature on home brewing come from the US nowadays, it has been seen as a 'essential' step.

Firstly the science. Raising the temperature of the grain bed after mashing fluidises the glucans which are sticky, and slow down the flow of wort from the tun. Also In theory it fixes the fermentability of the wort.

And meanwhile in the real world . . . . compared to a commercial tun our mash bed depth is tiny (4 feet compared to 12-18") . . . and even in a 20BBL brewery I've never seen them attempt a mash out . . .Beer factories with their centrifuge lauter tuns where they want to recover every bit of wort, it probably becomes important. . . . but how much is the slight decrease in wort viscosity going affect the run off when you remove a bag from a pot containing liquid?? The same goes for sparging at 78C . . . I never go above 72C and often its down at 68-70. . . . However once the base of my kettle is covered I turn the gas on very low, to heat the wort up . . . and thereby take it over the 78C 'magic' point fixing the wort fermentability profile.

The same applies to the Braumeister or any other BIAB process. . . Lift the 'Bag' and turn the heat on . . . even if you are sparging then the process is the same. Lift the Tube, turn the heater on, sparge with 6L . . . by the time the sparge is complete the wort is almost boiling.

No need in a 'BIAB' process to do a mash out at all. . . . and indeed even in a 50-80L 3V mash very little to be gained, if anything.

[E J Gumby]

Thanks for the replies, lads.

Not something I've got to worry about, then.