Wonder Mash

[Cellar_Rat]

As the OG is not really that high, and the price of leccy is.

Is there anything wrong with mashing and boiling a 1/2 barrel brew and them adding the extra 'liquor' to the fermenter after chilling?

[koomber]

Do you mean making a (for example) 1.100 mash, boiling it and then watering it down to 1.050? (Actual SG's may vary)

There shouldn't really, but you hsould be aware that at high OG's extraction of sugars from the wort can take a bit of a pummeling, so you might want to add a bit more grain. The beer might come out darker depending on the power and type of your elements (you'll be putting the same amount of power into a smaller volume so you might see a bit more caramelisation).
The other thing to consider is that hop efficiency can take a major pummeling at high OG (Stronger beers need to have more hops to get the same amount of bitterness extracted.) Apart from that you should be okay.

[mcblades]

I was thinking of doing this also. You need to consider hop utilisation also I think. Hop acids are not v soluble at the best of times and the volume of solvent (wort) will influence how much bittering you can extract from the hops (sugar levels will also affect AA solubility I think). I always add more hops than the recipe suggests (using the CAMRA recipe book) as I think the lidl boiler is a bit underpowered so extracts less bittering. One advantage of the 12L brew length would be less mess and boil over. It always catches me out and is a bugger to clean up!

let me know how your experiments fare.

cheers

Mark

[koomber]

On a slightly similar thread another way of doing the whole high gravity brews is to mash the grain, then with the collected wort use that to mash some more grain.
You need to have a mash out step (raise the temp at the end of the first mash to denature the proteins) but apparently it makes a pretty good beer.

[mcblades]

Hi Graham

By mash out do you mean boiling the wort, cooling to mash temp then mashing again with more grain? Seems a lot of faff unles you are going for a barley wine. Also, at those sugar concs I would think that the dissolved sugars would influence extraction from the 2nd batch of grain (le chatelier and all that). Would you be better extracting from a larger wort volume then extending the boil to reduce volume to increase the sugar conc?

I suppose that may not be energy efficient but may be more grain efficient.

cheers

Mark

[mcblades]

On my last brew I checked the price for the mash and boil using a lidl leccy meter. For a 23L brew length (30L of water) I used about £1.50 in electricity (heat to mash temp, and boil with top ups). Normally I treat my water by boiling and adding epsom salts and gypsum. That would have increased the price but have tried the last 2 brews without water treatment and both were v drinkable and gave similar sugar extraction to the treated water.

[koomber]

Mashout is rasing the temp of the mash to above 76 or so °C, it doesn't have to go above boiling, this can be achieved by adding water to the mash tun. Apparently it also makes the mashout easier, but I've yet to have mash that wasn't easy...

You are right though, there wouldn't be much point in doing this is you wern't doing a big beer. But it means you can get a bigger batch of high OG beer from your gear (this night not be a problem if you had a massive mash tun to go with your boiler).