79 replies to this topic

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

I've got some 2308 and this is listed as an appropriate yeast for maibocks. What are the general guidelines here?I was thinking of using a base of munich, vienna and pilsner and mashing pretty high (maybe 155F) and do a single infusion followed by a 90min boil. I figured I'd do an FWH, a 60 min addition and a 30 min addition of hops. Probably magnum for the 60 min and then hallertau MF and/or czech saaz for the FWH and 30 min additions. Am I way off? What do you guys like to do for your maibocks?I'd try to have specs like this I think:OG: 1.068IBU: 30

[drewseslu]

Sounds great, HMF would be my choice. Maibocks can certainly handle a small, later addition, as well.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

Sounds great, HMF would be my choice. Maibocks can certainly handle a small, later addition, as well.

how late?

[MtnBrewer]

Here's a maibock I made a few years ago. Drew tried it at the GABF homebrew tasting that year and liked it. I kinda cheated by using a lot of pale crystal but I think it came out pretty well.https://www.math.fsu.edu/~gmizell/recipes/Lenawee_Bock.html

[davelew]

I've made one with all Munich and a George Fix style old-school 50-60-70 mash schedule.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

I've made one with all Munich and a George Fix style old-school 50-60-70 mash schedule.

what's that?

[davelew]

what's that?

50-60-70 is a 30 minute rest at 50C (122F - protein rest), a 30 minute rest at 60C (140F - beta amylase rest) and a 30 minute rest at 70 C (158F - alpha amylase rest). The late George Fix wrote some excellent and heavy-on-the-theory reference books for homebrewers, and popularized the 50-60-70 mash for homebrewers.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

50-60-70 is a 30 minute rest at 50C (122F - protein rest), a 30 minute rest at 60C (140F - beta amylase rest) and a 30 minute rest at 70 C (158F - alpha amylase rest). The late George Fix wrote some excellent and heavy-on-the-theory reference books for homebrewers, and popularized the 50-60-70 mash for homebrewers.

so it this only possible if you have a mash tun sitting on a burner? or is this a decoction where you pull out some of the mash, heat it, and then put it back into the tun? this would probably be a great beer to try a decoction on.

[MtnBrewer]

so it this only possible if you have a mash tun sitting on a burner? or is this a decoction where you pull out some of the mash, heat it, and then put it back into the tun? this would probably be a great beer to try a decoction on.

You can do it any way you want to: infusion, heat or decoction. You're absolutely right that a malty brew like this would be a good candidate for decoction.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

You can do it any way you want to: infusion, heat or decoction. You're absolutely right that a malty brew like this would be a good candidate for decoction.

does anyone have a good method/link/info for a beginner decoction? Never tried one before and would be kind of interested to give it a whirl if it isn't too much extra work.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

after doing a bit of searching here it sounds like a single decoction might be the way to go. What do you guys think on that?ETA: I see MTN is posting - can't wait to hear what he has to say...

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

ETA: I see MTN is posting - can't wait to hear what he has to say...

I think he faked me out!!!

[MtnBrewer]

does anyone have a good method/link/info for a beginner decoction? Never tried one before and would be kind of interested to give it a whirl if it isn't too much extra work.

I can't guarantee that.

I wouldn't try it without some good brewing software to help you estimate your decoction pulls. Basically the idea is to mash in for a protein rest, then do a thick decoction pull of about 1/3 to 1/2 of the mash, boil it and put it back in to raise the temperature up to your next rest. Lather, rinse, repeat for each rest. Sounds simple in concept but in practice a couple of things work against you. One is that when you pull all that thermal mass out of the mash tun, the temperature will start to drop a lot faster than normal. So it helps to have a very well insulated tun without a lot of empty space in it. Two, the decoction will lose more temperature than you think between boiling and adding it back to the mash. (It's even worse for me because water only boils at 201°F here.) The net result of all of this is that it's hard to actually get all the way from one step to the next. So here are a few tips that will help:

[*]Start with a thick mash. Less mass in the tun means that it's easier to raise the temp for your next step.
[*]Do your protein rest at 55°C rather than 50°C.
[*]Use a kitchen strainer to pull your decoctions. You want mostly grain with just enough water to fill the pore spaces between the kernels.
[*]Stir. Stir a lot. You can't let the decoction scorch, which it will if you turn your back on it for even a few seconds. Ask me how I know this.
[*]Pull bigger decoctions than you think you need.
[/list] I'm not trying to talk you out of it, just giving you a heads up of what you're looking at. I've done a few and I've come to the realization that they're not worth the trouble for me but ymmv.

[Big Nake]

Zym: There was a thread I started on Dusseldorf Altbiers over on the Milwaukee & Chicago board and it turned into quite an educational decoction lesson . The conversation about decoction starts on page 2. There is another decoction discussion from the same board and there may be a lot of overlap, but some of these guys are older, more experienced brewers who are all over the decoction so there may be some good info there. Cheers and good luck with the Maibock. Ps. The book BEER CAPTURED has a recipe for a Maibock, I believe. IIRC, the recipe is for a brewery's beer that is labeled as "Ur-Maibock" and also IIRC, any beer with an UR- in front of it means that brewery actually created the style. There are UR-Marzens, UR-bocks, etc. If you want me to post it or PM it to you, I'll be happy to. Cheers.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

question:could I accomplish similar end results by doing my typical single infusion mash but towards the end pulling 1/3 of the grains out, boiling, and adding back in for my mash out? it seems like if I did this I could avoid all of the worries about hitting temps b/c if I didn't hit my temps it wouldn't be that big of a deal since the mash is pretty much done with anyway.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

Zym: There was a thread I started on Dusseldorf Altbiers over on the Milwaukee & Chicago board and it turned into quite an educational decoction lesson . The conversation about decoction starts on page 2. There is another decoction discussion from the same board and there may be a lot of overlap, but some of these guys are older, more experienced brewers who are all over the decoction so there may be some good info there. Cheers and good luck with the Maibock. Ps. The book BEER CAPTURED has a recipe for a Maibock, I believe. IIRC, the recipe is for a brewery's beer that is labeled as "Ur-Maibock" and also IIRC, any beer with an UR- in front of it means that brewery actually created the style. There are UR-Marzens, UR-bocks, etc. If you want me to post it or PM it to you, I'll be happy to. Cheers.

so ken, after all of that what did you think of decoctions? did you think it did anything for you? I'll take a PM of that recipe for sure! Thanks!

[Malzig]

Ps. The book BEER CAPTURED has a recipe for a Maibock, I believe. IIRC, the recipe is for a brewery's beer that is labeled as "Ur-Maibock" and also IIRC, any beer with an UR- in front of it means that brewery actually created the style.

That would be Einbecker Mai-Ur-Bock. It's reasonably available (they have it at Downtown Wine and Spirits in Somerville, MA), but I've never been able to get a very fresh bottle of it. I find the difficult (read: boring) part of Decoction is stirring through a long boil. I've abandoned using any mash rest for the Decoction, letting the primary mash do that work for me, and don't boil for more than 5 minutes, which saves a lot of effort and still works to raise the temperature. It also means I can have the Decoction out and back into the mash in about 10-15 minutes. It also means that Decoction adds little if any time to my brew day. I have trouble hitting my target temperatures exactly with decoction, too. What I usually end up doing is plan for a single decoction to go from a beta to an alpha rest, that way I know I hit my most important mash temperature. Then, I decoct to the alpha rest and if it's a little off I don't worry, but I can always do another decoction or an infusion to bump it a little higher if I think it matters. If I want a second decoction, I use it to hit something near a mashout temperature. Depending on the beer, my typical scheme goes something like 148F for 20', when I decoct to hit 155-158F at around 35', then lauter at 60' or pull a decoction and bump the mash into the 160s for a "mashout" around 75'.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

That would be Einbecker Mai-Ur-Bock. It's reasonably available (they have it at Downtown Wine and Spirits in Somerville, MA), but I've never been able to get a very fresh bottle of it. I find the difficult (read: boring) part of Decoction is stirring through a long boil. I've abandoned using any mash rest for the Decoction, letting the primary mash do that work for me, and don't boil for more than 5 minutes, which saves a lot of effort and still works to raise the temperature. It also means I can have the Decoction out and back into the mash in about 10-15 minutes. It also means that Decoction adds little if any time to my brew day. I have trouble hitting my target temperatures exactly with decoction, too. What I usually end up doing is plan for a single decoction to go from a beta to an alpha rest, that way I know I hit my most important mash temperature. Then, I decoct to the alpha rest and if it's a little off I don't worry, but I can always do another decoction or an infusion to bump it a little higher if I think it matters. If I want a second decoction, I use it to hit something near a mashout temperature. Depending on the beer, my typical scheme goes something like 148F for 20', when I decoct to hit 155-158F at around 35', then lauter at 60' or pull a decoction and bump the mash into the 160s for a "mashout" around 75'.

isn't the length of time you are boiling the grains a big part of the supposed benefits introduced by decoction? ETA: I'm starting a decoction thread so people can easily search in case there is some more good info coming out of this...

[Big Nake]

so ken, after all of that what did you think of decoctions? did you think it did anything for you? I'll take a PM of that recipe for sure! Thanks!

I went ahead with that beer and did the single decoction. It went well (there is a late entry in that thread where I discuss what happened) except that I wasn't able to get my main mash temp any higher than 146°. Everyone over there agreed it would be fine. The beer fermented and ended up in a keg but the flavor was weird. This could've been from anything including bad ingredients, yeast that was in poor health, a low-level infection and a host of other things. Maybe I scorched the grains while I was doing the decoction. Never tried it after that.

[Malzig]

isn't the length of time you are boiling the grains a big part of the supposed benefits introduced by decoction?

Not to re-start the usual argument, but it's highly debatable whether there is any positive benefit to decoction, so I don't worry about that much. Boiling longer will probably make the wort a bit darker, implying that there is more melanoidin formation, and might extract more polyphenols from the husks, but positive flavor contributions haven't held up well in properly-controlled, blinded, taste testings. In that case, I doubt that there would be a detectable flavor difference between a long boil and a short boil that would hold up to blind tasting. Not to say that there aren't numerous brewers who believe that they do get flavor improvement with decoction, and I like the beers that I decoct, but I don't decoct with the expectation of making a better beer. To me, a decoction is what it was originally intended as: a way to raise the temperature of the mash. My method makes it a relatively easy and non-time consuming for me to raise the temperature of the mash, which was my goal. Short (or long) decoctions can improve mash efficiency, though, depending on your system.