Saison/Tripel/Wit Juice (a stupid Mashani Experiment)

[mashani]

This wort is not to make beer immediately. This is to be used in future beers, so I can just toss in some MoreBeer Pilsner LME, or Wheat DME, candi sugar, water, etc. and end up with a faster brew day. I should get 4 or 5 quick brew day batches out of this mash, or 3 or 4 at least, depending on if I do a tripel with some of it. So it makes the PITA worth it to me. At least I am telling myself this. LOL.

I'm going to use some tomorrow (probably) for a batch, and freezing the rest in 1 quart and 2 quart "blocks", just like some folks freeze starter wort.

I wanted to use Oat Malt in this, but I could not find any anywhere within reasonable driving distance of me. And I didn't want to order it from Northern Brewer and pay the shipping for just that. So I had to figure out how to pull off a tricky mash with more # flaked grains then base malt, and with most of that base malt being wheat... because this volume is quite simply as much as I can mash with my pot with the basket in, and I didn't want to leave it out in case the decoction failed to bring temps where I wanted. Even though I do it BIAB, this is a bit nuts in my pot, so to assure it all went well and this didn't turn into a giant ball of dough and got converted properly, I did a step / decoction mash, and threw in some 6 row in place of Pilsner I would have used along with the Oat Malt. And I used white wheat instead of red wheat, as it's highly modified and has a lot too. But still, there was a stupid amount of beta glucans and proteins in this mash, so I wanted to bust some of that up.

I figured if all else fails, I could make WIT beer out of it, or else just use Bella Saison/French Saison which will eat the starch anyways.

The diastatic power of the entire mash ((6 row (180) + white wheat (130 * 2)) / 7.5 as in 7.5#) works out to 58, which is enough for conversion - Munich can self convert at 50, and I do that all the time. But this is why I used 6 row instead of 2 row or pilsner. Plus it's got more husks, which this mash could certainly use to help bust up dough balls when I stirred. The "grainy" flavor people complain about - well pilsner is more "grainy" then 2-row too. So I don't see it as a problem in any way.

Other then the flaked Rye, this is pretty much the adjunct blend/ratio found in a batch of Tripel Karmeliet. I might make a tripel out of 1/3 or half of this, but the rest will go into a couple of saisons or maybe a wit beer I think. The rye is extra, because I like rye in anything.

1# 6 Row
2# White Wheat
2# Flaked Oats
1# Flaked Barley
1# Flaked Rye
8oz Acidulated Malt

For the decoction, I simply pulled some wort out of my pot into a small pot using a measuring cup, using this calculator (http://www.franklinbrew.org/tools/decoction2.html) to figure out how much to pull and heat each time.

This mash also had the crap stirred out of it. A lot. Between every rest, and a handful of times during the Protease and Saccharification rests. It *needed* it.

This was the schedule I used. I did an oven mash to hold temps. But this meant that I had to pull my pot out of the oven to stir, and between each step, do the decoction, add it, then put it back in the oven. So there was a lot of heavy lifting involved.

113 degree Beta Glucan rest 15 minutes
122 degree Protease/Acid rest 45 minutes
147 degree Beta Amylase Saccharification rest 90 minutes
160 degree Alpha Amylase Saccharification rest 30 minutes
170 degree Mashout 15 minutes

Starch conversion test was ok after all of that. Thank god. It is cloudy though. We will see how much break settles overnight.

This was a thick mash for BIAB, which is why I stirred it so much, and then I sparged it too, similar to how Kealia (I think) does it, by pulling the basket from the pot, and hanging it above while I poured hot water through. I also squeezed the bag. That took me up to 3.75 gallons, which is as much as I can boil in my pot without super danger. I boiled it down to 3.

I'm no chill cooling this in the pot overnight with the lid on (stuck it in the oven) because it took so freaking long and I'm too tired to deal with packaging it up for freezing right now. I'll take OG in the AM, and I'll build my recipes around whatever it is. I'm expecting it to be anywhere between 1.05 to 1.06ish, unless I totally *$&*d up somehow. I'm hoping closer to 1.06, but this was not "normal" so who knows. I'll update this post with the details when I have them.

[Inkleg]

That's pretty cool, thanks for all the info. Have been Wanting to try some decoction mashes too, but just haven't been brave enough yet. This will help a lot.

[mashani]

I still have not pulled this out of the oven and checked it yet... soonish.

But @Inkleg, if you used a normal amount of base malt, or if this batch had 2# of oat malt instead of 2# of flaked oats, then you could change:

147 degree Beta Amylase Saccharification rest 90 minutes - to 60 minutes.
160 degree Alpha Amylase Saccharification rest 30 minutes - to 20 minutes.

That would be more normal. I just extended them due to this being a tricky mash.

The rest of the steps are "normal" but you don't need a Beta Glucan rest unless your using a lot of flaked/unmalted grains and your trying to control the gumminess. Normally the Protease rest will do a good enough job. But for a high % wheat or rye beer, it can be helpful in addition to the Protease rest in order to avoid stuck mash/sparge, especially if you are doing it in a MLT vs BIAB.

I only did it because of how much flaked grains I ended up having to use. And I haven't done one of these in a long time. So I wanted to be careful. And now I remember why I haven't done one of these in a long time... single infusion is so much less work... but that would not have flown here at all.

[mashani]

OG of this stuff was 1.066. So I'm pretty happy with that. But it took a hella lot of work to get that efficiency, so I think I'd gladly trade the time for the extra efficiency most of the time.

It was still really cloudy, did another starch test, said it was fine, it's just the cold break never happened since I no chilled it. That's the one down side of the no chill. Usually it's not a biggie, but with this mash it's got a lot of stuff that really needs a break. I should have chilled it, I just was too tired.

But this stuff tasted awesome, and I brewed with some of this stuff tonight, and got a good cold break in the kettle which got it to glob up and settle a good bit. I still expect the resulting beer to be a bit hazy, but that's the nature of the beast, I wasn't expecting any different using all those flaked grains.

I will say "don't try this at home" unless you have no other choice. Be sane and use a realistic amount of base malt and save yourself a lot of pain, unless you are feeling insane.