Mashing the Pale

This past weekend Atsuko and I brewed a pale ale. Here's the mash:

Mashing the pale, part 1

Mashing the pale, part 2
This isn't all that comprehensible as a how-to video for beginners, I realize, and if you're a seasoned veteran you won't learn anything new either. Although you will notice a few things I do or say that are incorrect no doubt.


If you're new to all-grain brewing, mashing is in three steps: Mashing (steeping the grain), recirculating and draining, and sparging (rinsing). That's the simple version.


I mashed in at 76C for a target of 67C, but by the time I got done fighting the dough balls my heat had dropped significantly. I ended up boiling and adding 4 liters more to try to get back up to temp, but never got past 65. (Unless my thermometer is screwed up; not unlikely since it came from Ikea.) Not a big deal, just meant a higher water to grist ratio and presumably a higher efficiency because of that. That means more available fermentables coming out of the mash, and a higher gravity (amount of dissolved solids, notably sugars, in H2O); the lower mash temp should also mean more starch to sugar conversion (I think) resulting in more for the yeast to feed on, resulting in a thinner, more alcoholic beer, provided I pitched enough healthy yeast. More on that below. The finished wort was still nice and sweet though--possibly due to using Melanoidin malt--so let's hope the low temps and healthy yeast will dry that out some.


I sparged with less water to compensate, and ended up with such an efficient mash that I got my target volume--and gravity--and then some, without ever doing the second sparge that my software (Beertools) called for. Indeed, my preboil gravity was 9 points over my target, as I mention in the vid. I added 4 more liters of tap water prior to boiling, which brought my grav down to where I wanted, 1.048. It also gave me a 29-liter boil, rather than the target 25. But then after an hour boil my gravity was up to 1.056, two points heavier than my target (I got this wrong in the video--oops). Well that's not bad, I guess. But how could the larger volume have changed the evaporation rate to give me a heavier-than-predicted gravity? That's what I'm wondering, sort of.


The boil went off fine, and the final wort smelled amazing and tasted really good. I mean really good. I have never said that about a post-boil wort before. Usually it's pretty funky and bitter, and you just trust that the ferment will sort it out. The bitterness was a bit harsh, and perceptually separate from the big sweetness, but other than that I felt like I could almost chill it and just drink it like it was.


So high hopes for this one. If the yeast come through. I started this Scottish ale yeast three days prior. But it looked kinda brown (should be white), and didn't seem to ever take off, so I thought it might be dead. But I pitched it anyway. Then I really thought it might be dead, so I whipped up some rehydrated dry yeast, kind of generic stuff, and pitched that too. It seemed like I had airlock activity within three hours. Either the dry yeast is awesome, or the reports of the Scottish ale yeast's death were greatly exaggerated, and combined with the almost certainly viable dry yeast will create a yeast monster of epic proportions to gobble up all the extra fermentables in that burly, bitter, spicy, fragrant, ass kicking pale ale.


Keep you posted.