Hybrid mashing process

[Bilsch]

Hybrid mash process for malts with dissimilar modification levels.

Interesting new, at least I think, mashing process for a grist containing well modified and under modified malts, kept separate in two distinct mashes for the first part of the process then remixed.. in an effort to work the best qualities of each grain. So this should be a decoction hochkurz in name but not by common process convention. Anyway for lack of a better term at the moment, I will call it Decochkurz. Yes yes.. I know that sounds funny and not Germanically correct because this hybrid mash process is technically not a high extraction but hey, until someone corrects me I’m going to roll with it.

Why am I doing this? Well as you might have read in another thread, I like to make some of my own malts. Primarily because modern malt is quite over modified, yes I know the term is “well modified” but for my purposes, namely decoctions, they are far overdone. Anyway that topic is grist for the mill of another thread and so back to the mash at hand.

This all came about while contemplating an interesting grist bill for a pilsner. I wanted to use a good proportion of hull-less grain to emulate something like a partial endosperm mash to explore the taste difference of fewer hulls. Hull-less malt, besides smelling absolutely awesome, obviously eliminates the need for sieving out the hulls. The remainder of the recipe would use modern pils malt, specifically Bestmalz. The question how to properly work a mash containing two wildly different modification level grains? I usually do decoction at least a single step in all my beers so I started to plan where I would pull the decoctions and what temperatures to use, but no regimen seemed appropriate to service this mix. One malt was needing to be handled with more care via a step mash and the other grain needing to be slapped around a little more to coax out its better qualities. It just seemed right to keep em separated. Some might argue this is nothing more then a cereal mash, but that would technically be incorrect since the home hull-less grain, while very under modified, still contains enzymes.


So I split the grains, sent the home made malt through a standard decoction and the Best malz through a hochkurz step mash and remixed the boiled decoction portion to raise the step from the maltose rest directly to the saccharification temperature. The first mash, being smaller, was easy to handle using only about a gallon of water to 3 pounds grain. The entire volume then taken through protein rest, to maltose, to saccharification and on to boil. Just about the time the smaller mash tested iodine negative, the second larger mash was doughed in. The second mash portion with the Best Pils was 3.9 gal / 8 lbs grain which was brought together at 143, held for 45min the remixed with the first and the temp came 158, just a degree away from the target.

I have to say that the timing of this hybrid process felt completely natural and everything went to plan. I won’t bore the readers with the rest of the details of this beer as they proceed from here quite typically in the experience of the readers on this forum. I hope to report back in 8 to 10 weeks with the taste results.

[Bryan R]

Well.. If I was posed with the same "predicament" I would have done the same! Nice work.