All of NBs AG recipes call for a Mash Out. How many of you actually do it and do you find it to be absolutely necessary?
I do it every time. What’s an extra ten minutes.
but is it necessary, I have no clue.
Possibly necessary for fly-sparging, not necessary for batch-sparging.
If you can bring your sweet wort to >170 F in a matter of 20-25 minutes, you don’t need no stinking mashout. Mashouts are for commercial brewers, where it takes hours to get the wort up to a boil.
So if you don’t do a mash out, do you use your full water volume in your strike water?
Are we confusing “mash out” with “sparging”? With batch sparging, I just put in 4 gallons or so of 180-190 degree water for a couple minutes and run off
[quote=“BrewCarp”]So if you don’t do a mash out, do you use your full water volume in your strike water?[/quote]You can either do it that way or add some boiling water at the end of the mash to boost the temp a little (doesn’t have to reach 168F for a 10-minute mashout, though) or just do a bigger sparge.
I just run 175-180 degree sparge water into my mash which brings it up to mid160’s… No “official” mashout. I do a combo fly/batch sparge I guess…
To be honest, from the time my 60 minute mash has ended, until I have finished collecting 8 gallons of Wort is probably only 10-15 minutes . . … Tops. I start the flame on my boil kettle when I have collected about an inch of wort, so it is also bringing it up to a boil within about 10 minutes of the end of collection.
Is there a purpose to mashing out, other than to “increase efficiency” of sugar extraction??? I get 80-85% efficiency doing what I am doing. To me, I would rather undershoot the 168 degrees than risk going over 170 and getting tannin extraction and possible astringency problems.
Increase efficiency, “halt conversion” . . . . is there another reason? If your efficiency is over 80% what is the point of a mashout?? I don’t want to miss something, but, seems like an unnecessary step in my experience.
This.
[quote=“Braufessor”]
Increase efficiency, “halt conversion” . . . . is there another reason? If your efficiency is over 80% what is the point of a mashout?? I don’t want to miss something, but, seems like an unnecessary step in my experience.[/quote]
To help with wort flow during sparging. Sometimes draining my mash tun takes FOREVER without a mashout.
