MdV: Merchant du Vin beer e-newsletter – Tuesday May 18, 2010: Mashing

Mashing: How Beermaking Begins

May 2010

Zatec Dark Lager and Lindemans Faro Lambic are now appearing in the US

As mentioned last month, these two wonderful beers are arriving in the US now - try 'em when you see 'em, and if you run a store, bar or restaurant please consider selling them. Faro is a beer style not commonly seen outside Belgium, and Lindemans Faro is appetizing and appealing, with a bit of sweetness to balance the tart complexity of a lambic. Zatec Dark is a very traditional dark lager from the Czech Republic - it offers deep caramel malt with contemplative notes, married to the elegant aroma of Saaz hops.

Accolades, News & Events:

Merchant du Vin's benchmark import beers continue to gain attention in the media:
Men's Journal magazine ran a "pairing beer with food" feature on May 6, '10 - included in the short list of eight beers were Samuel Smith's India Ale and Lindemans Framboise Lambic. Check out the article right here.
Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout and Orval Trappist Ale are both in GQ Magazine's April 23, 2010, article "50 Beers to Try Right Now." Here is the article.
Then, CBS News picked six beers from the GQ list and put them on The Early Show - and one of the six was Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout! The video link is right here.
We listed this one last month, but it's such a huge accolade that we'll mention it again: Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout was the overall winner of the Washington Post's "Beer Madness".
A full current news listing is always on our news page; you can also check local beer tastings, dinners and festivals on our national events page. If you are interested in beer glassware, clothing and collectables we also have an online e-store .

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 brewers 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 mashing techniques 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. Ayinger Celebrator, Altbairisch Dunkel, Oktober Fest-Marzen, and both Zatec Bright Lager and Zatec Dark Lager are produced via a decoction mash.

A couple of clarifying notes:
Some barley malt is specially treated by roasting, smoking, or caramelizing. These "specialty grains" are in the recipe for flavor, color, and body - 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.
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. Likewise, the grist of a wheat beer can be up to 60% wheat but it always has a significant amount of barley as well.

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Until next month, cheers and thanks for enhancing your life with excellent beer - and a special thanks to our wholesale and retail partners.

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