What is a "rest?"

Northern Brewer General
1

What is meant by a rest during the brewing process? And what does it do?

2

Can you give an example?

3

I’ve heard the term temperature rest. Is that sort of a lull in the action before going on to the next step?

4

It’s a period of time. Used in “all grain” brewing. You soak the grain at a certain temp for a period of time.

http://www.netplaces.com/home-brewing/y ... -rests.htm

Not commonly used with today highly modified malts.

Here is an online version of a great book.

http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html
5

Back in the day when malts weren’t highly modified like they are these days, brewers would conduct multi-step mashes to help with efficiency, each step was at a different temperature and were allowed to “rest” for a certain amount of time before raising the temperature for the next step. These days a single infusion is adequate for most all brews. Check out
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter16-2.html
for more information.

6

A rest is when you kick back relax and enjoy a brew. :wink:

7

A rest is just the amount of time at temp for your enzymes to do their thing, whether thats a protein rest, a glucan rest, an acid rest, a beta rest or an alpha rest. Enzymes take time to work. I suppose they call it a “rest” because you aren’t sitrring the mash during this time for the most part.

8

Thanks everyone. I appreciate you taking the time to reply.