Absolutely! Dry Beer.

Rather than respond to Sjoerd’s question in the comments, I think it is worth discussing it in it’s own blog post.

Here’s the question (I’ve edited it a bit to summarize):

I wonder if it is possible to create an absolutely dry beer, by first doing the alpha-step on 73 degrees, and then adding beta-amylase enzymes and continue mashing at 60 degrees. I remember reading that enzymes reside in the liquid parts for the most. Most of the starch, however, resides in the non-liquid parts.

So it would be something like this:
Heat to 60 C and mash it for 10 minutes. Drain and save half of the liquid. Raise the heat of the remaining mash to 73 C and let it rest for one hour. All the starch will now be converted by alpha-amylase into long-chain sugars, but the beta-amylase is denatured. Let the mash cool back down to 60 C, and add the remaining part of the liquid in which there still is a lot of active beta-amylase.
Now we can start the beta-amylase rest, which will convert the long-chain sugars into simple sugars. The only starch left should now be the starch from the liquid that was set apart, and I believe that this is not much.

What are your thoughts on this?

It is an interesting proposition – in essence that you would be doing a backwards multi-step mash. I did a quick search for this idea on Google, but nothing really came up. I may not be searching using the right terms though. But it does seem as though it is not being discussed on home-brewing forums. (I’ll just venture to suggest that this may be because very few home-brewers can directly heat their mash-tuns effectively, and of those that can (using computerized recirculating wort systems) may find it difficult to remove wort, then add it back later. Just guessing though)

I think the theory behind your proposal is sound. The only problem I see is that a lot of the starch does actually dissolve into the liquid before being broken down into sugar (this is proven by starch conversion testing – the iodine readily reacts with dissolved starch at the beginning of mashing). So a large part of your starch will have to be mashed in a normal method (it will sit with the beta-amylase while the rest of the mash is being heated to 73 C). To convert this dissolved starch, you would have to then raise the whole mash back to 73 C at the end to ensure its conversion. This means two mashings. But, it would probably result in a drier beer, and improved efficiency, but at the cost of twice the time (and energy).

This leads me to think that perhaps you could do a double mash – just mash half of your grain in a multi-step, but don’t raise the heat and mash out. Instead then mix in the remaining grain and water, and start over. This would mean that the beta-amylase from the second mashing would get at the long-chain sugars from the first first; and there would be a lot of alpha-amylase around from the first mashing to ensure complete conversion in the second mashing. The advantage to this method is that you can do it all in one mash-kettle, and you don’t have to mess around draining off half the mash then adding it back in (hot, sugary water is kind of scary to handle).

I think the broader question is whether this is even worth it. These days my mashing method involves:

1. Using half the water (bringing the mash thickness closer to what non-BIAB home-brewers use – results in improved efficiency and makes raising the temperature of the mash during intermediate steps easier),
2. Doing a three-step process (the 63 – 67 – 70 C) with 20 minutes at each rest,
3. Then adding in the rest of the water (at 52 C: temperature of the water that comes out of the hot water tap),
4. Which drops the temperature back down to around 63 C, then raising the heat to 75 C for mash-out.

This method has been giving me brew-house efficiencies around 80% consistently, and it does not take much longer than my usual mashing (the time it takes to heat up between steps is around 5 minutes, and the final heating takes around 20 minutes). Is it worth doubling my mashing time to get efficiency up to 83 – 84 %? Maybe on a commercial scale, but for me, the extra points of efficiency are not worth it.

As well, you would probably end up with beer with no character or flavour.

The final thing I want to point out is that alpha-amylase on its own is a very effective enzyme at producing simple sugars. Think about it – animals, including humans, get by with only alpha-amylase. Many ‘beers’ (e.g. chicha) in traditional economies are made with grain mashed using human saliva. If given enough time and the right conditions, alpha-amylase can convert starch into simple-chain sugars. It’s just faster utilizing beta-amylase.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 9

So what does it all look like, when you put it together?

Here are the recipes I ended up using for the Champagne of Beers. The first one is for the sourmash part of the beer, the second for the main recipe:

Sour Mash (part of Champagne of Beer)

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics
—————-

Batch Size (L):           4.50
Total Grain (kg):         1.20
Anticipated OG:          1.059
Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar

%     Amount     Name                                  Origin              Potential SRM
—————————————————————————–
75.0     0.90 kg.  Lager Malt(2-row)             Canada         1.036      2
25.0     0.30 kg.  Flaked Rice                                             1.040      1

Out of a total of 6 kg of grain (including sugar), 1.2 kg was used for the sourmash (or 1/5th). It was mashed using a typical mash temperature of 67 C for 60 minutes, but was not boiled, and no hops added. After mashing, the grains and mash were transferred into a sanitized plastic jug. This, after souring, would be added to the regular mash to lower the pH, and kill off the lactic acid bacteria.

From what I had read about sourmashing, all I needed to do was add a handful of unmashed pale malt grain, and the naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria would do the rest over the next 3 days. Furthermore the temperature of the sourmash should be kept at around 50 C to ensure that the lactic acid bacteria thrive, and other contaminant micro organisms suppressed.

Well, I added a handful of malt grain, and kept the sourmash in a cooler with lights to maintain the required 50 C temperature. And nothing happened. It didn’t sour, it didn’t ferment, it didn’t stink. It didn’t do anything for two days. I thought maybe the high temperature was the problem, and removed the sourmash from the cooler and just put it by a heat vent in my house. Another handful of malted grain and a day later, nothing was happening; again no souring, no fermenting, no stinking, no gas. No action.

In desperation I added a tablespoon of the sourdough bread starter I keep. That did the trick. A day later the sourmash was fermenting vigorously. Tasted clean, sour, and a bit fruity. I’ll show pictures in the next posting.

What does this mean? Probably that it is harder to start a sourmash than it sounds. I don’t have any other lessons from this. Other than that keeping a sourmash at 50 C is not necessary, or beneficial. I’m just glad I had a sourdough culture available to kick start the sourmash.

And a picture of what it looked like!

Notice the bulging sides of the jug, and the inflated plastic wrap over the opening – very actively fermenting.

Making the ‘Champage of Beers’ Part 8 (finally!)

Hey,

So I’ve been otherwise engaged for the last few months. Sorry. Maybe this will make Sjoerd happy? The cliffhanger I’ve left you with was how will I make the Champagne of Beers ‘dry’? Actually, the cliffhanger is more like how did the beer turn out!

In regards to the dryness, I aimed to ensure a complete conversion of starches to simple sugars (as far as possible) by regulating the temperature. I started relatively low (around 63 C) and stayed there for 30 minutes. Then raised the heat to 67 C for another 30 minutes, finally I brought it up to 70 C for 30 minutes. The first step is ideal for beta-amylases, so they get to make a lot of simple sugars. Unfortunately, they leave behind a lot of starch because they are stumped by branches on the starch molecules. So the rest at 67 C (the typical homebrew saccharification rest) tried to get the alpha-amylase into the action to break apart the big starches into smaller ones – but still allow the beta-amylase to continue its work chewing up the starch into simple sugars at the new end-points of the starch molecules created by the alpha-amylases’s snips. The final rest, at 70 C is to get the alpha-amylase into its happy place. Unfortunely, this is hot enough to cook the beta-amylase, but my hope was that it would have finished its work by now. However, the alpha-amylase could still snip apart ‘branch-limit dextrines’ and other complex sugars in to smaller, hopefully simpler ones, that the yeast could then tear into (and so drying out the beer).

The other contributor to dryness in the Champagne of Beers is all the cane sugar I added to it. This is a bit counter-intuitive (isn’t sugar sweet, which is not dry?). Being completely composed of a simple sugar, the yeast can convert all of it into alcohol. So no worries about sweetness. In addition, by relying on cane sugar for a substantial part of the extract in this recipe, the proportion of complex, unfermentable sugar is correspondingly lower. Further, I believe that the taste of alcohol itself balances sweetness, so the added alcohol content in this beer also will make it taste dryer.

The yeast for this beer ( Wyeast’s 1388 Belgian Strong Ale yeast) is also known for finishing dry – one of the considerations in choosing it.

Finally, I have been fermenting it a long time in secondary – several months now. With hope, the yeast will have become desperate enough to try eating any sugars in the beer. This may take some time to be noticable, because the activity level of the yeast is so low, but that’s why this long period is partly for.