MdV: Merchant du Vin beer e-newsletter – Wednesday, March 24, 2004:  Mashing

 

NEWS, EVENTS, ARTICLES

 

In the Beverage Testing Institute’s “Best of 2003,” Ayinger placed first in all six categories entered; Samuel Smith got five gold medals; and Traquair Jacobite Ale got the highest score of all beers tasted, a 97.  See the new issue of All About Beer (May 2004, v. 25 #2) for the complete listing . . .  All About Beer also has an information-packed article about Trappist breweries by Chuck Cook – featured in detail, and with pictures, are Orval and Westmalle.

 

The Brewing Newspapers (www.brewingnews.com) are great beer resources and mention Westmalle this month . . .  

 

The April 2004 Bon Appetite recommends “the complex” Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock.

 

Pike Brewery was featured nationally on Fox News Feb. 24, in the report on beer, health, and labeling.

 

A wonderful beer dinner at the Library Bistro in Seattle: the Art of Beer Fest in Boston; the Portland International Beer Fest returns to Oregon . . . it’s a great time to enjoy fine beer.  More news & events across the country at:

 

http://merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/news.html

 

 

BEER CHAT FROM THE BEER COURT JESTER: MASHING

 

We know where wine comes from: squeeze the grapes, ferment the juice.

But aren’t barleycorns a little dry, and tough to squeeze?  How is beer made from barley?

 

The answer to this question lies in the magic locked up in barley malt.

 

Each barleycorn is a seed, designed to sprout and produce a new barley plant.  Each kernel is made up of three basic parts: 1. the outer protective layer, or husk; 2. the tiny baby plant; and 3. a starch food supply to get the baby plant started.

 

Malting – not to be confused with mashing – is moistening the seeds so they germinate and sprout, and then drying them.  Breweries rarely do their own malting.  They buy malt from malt houses and begin each brew with milling and mashing.

 

The malted barley contains natural enzymes – chemical triggers – that perform an important task.  Brewers crack the outer husk of the barleycorns via a roller mill (making “grist”), then they mix the grist with hot water at a specific temperature.  Over a period of an hour or two, natural enzymes in the malt convert the starch to sugar (maltose).  Then it’s a fairly simple matter to rinse this sweet liquid away from the husks and transfer it into a brewkettle, where it is boiled and spiced with hops, then cooled and fermented with yeast.

 

Mashing, then, is cracking the grain and cooking it or steeping it in hot water to convert the starch to sugar. 

 

The three basic varieties of mashing are:

 

  1. Infusion mash: grist is mixed with hot water, and held in the 155 deg F. range for a period that is commonly 90 minutes.  Most American and British craft ales are made using an infusion mash. The temperature may be a little more, or less, than 155 F. depending on the brewer’s intent – different mash temperatures will result in changes to the finished beer.
  2. Step mash: grist is mixed with hot water and held at one temperature, then is raised to a higher temperature by applied heat.  There can be more than two steps – again, this depends on the brewer’s choice of grain and what she or he wants the beer to taste like.
  3. Decoction mash: grist is mixed with hot water and held, then a portion of the mash is removed and raised to a very high temperature.  When this very hot portion is added back to the main mash and gently mixed in, it raises the temperature of the whole mash to the next step.  As with a step mash, there can be several temperature steps in a decoction mash.  This labor- and time-intensive process, which also requires special equipment, can lead to deep, complex, stunning malt flavors – like Ayinger Celebrator.

 

A couple of clarifying notes:

 

  1. Some barley malt is specially treated by roasting, smoking, or caramelizing.  These “specialty grains” are there for flavor and for color, and they usually make up less than 15% of the total malt bill.  Because of the special ways they have been treated, they undergo little or no change from starch to sugar during the mash.  More about specialty grains in a future e-news.
  2. Brewers who add adjuncts like corn or rice to their mash are using a different variety of starch.   Because corn and rice don’t have the enzymes that will convert starch to sugar, adjunct brews always use barley as well: in the mash, the barley supplies the enzymes to convert all the starch to sugar.

 

 

 

Merchant du Vin, America’s Specialty Beer Importer Since 1978

www.merchantduvin.com