drying out a saison

[DIRTYBIRD]

I agree with all the guys above. I guided my wife's brewing of a Saison this father's day. I've never brewed a Saison. We chose Saison 1, Made a two liter starter. Took the fermentation little by little all the way up to 82F. It Finished out at 1.002. She mashed at 147F for 90 mins and used 1.5 lbs of simple sugar. Yeast didn't show any signs of slowing ever.

[TimmyR]

I agree with all the guys above. I guided my wife's brewing of a Saison this father's day. I've never brewed a Saison. We chose Saison 1, Made a two liter starter. Took the fermentation little by little all the way up to 82F. It Finished out at 1.002. She mashed at 147F for 90 mins and used 1.5 lbs of simple sugar. Yeast didn't show any signs of slowing ever.

Cool...I pitched 1.2L starters into 73F wort doughed in at 145F, raised to 149/150F and held for 60 min then up to 165F and sparged. Pitched Saison II and American Farmhouse from White Labs...I'm hoping to see 1.008 or less (OG 1.060.)

Cheers

[BDawg]

Why even bother mashing out a Saison?
The idea of a mashout is to lock in the dextrins by denaturing the enzymes.
If the aim is to produce as fermentable a wort as possible,
I see no reason to mash out -- just sparge and they'll keep chomping away reducing short chain dextrins
until they denature by themselves in the boil.

[Sinkman]

BDawg,

Never thought of it that way. I always thought of mashing out as something I HAD to do and often forget WHY. Brilliant!

[TimmyR]

Why even bother mashing out a Saison?
The idea of a mashout is to lock in the dextrins by denaturing the enzymes.
If the aim is to produce as fermentable a wort as possible,
I see no reason to mash out -- just sparge and they'll keep chomping away reducing short chain dextrins
until they denature by themselves in the boil.

Good point. Habit I guess is the reason I raise the temp. And I always sort of figured the rise to 165F was more to max out conversion than really denature the enzymes since you still have some alpha amylase activity up at 165F. But you make a good point and leaving it lower, longer would probably be a better idea.

[DBear]

@ BDawg

For my saisons I batch sparge, mash at 150F for 90min at a ratio of 1.8qts/lb.(gives about half the total volume) With this thin mash for 90m, heating my sparge water to get ~170F seems a waste of energy (not looking to denature), i could probably heat the sparge to the same 150F and still rinse out the same amount of sugar. Thoughts?

[Ozwald]

@ BDawg

For my saisons I batch sparge, mash at 150F for 90min at a ratio of 1.8qts/lb.(gives about half the total volume) With this thin mash for 90m, heating my sparge water to get ~170F seems a waste of energy (not looking to denature), i could probably heat the sparge to the same 150F and still rinse out the same amount of sugar. Thoughts?

You'll lose just a touch of heat from your grain bed, mostly depending on how quick you are. I would plan on adding a couple of degrees, but I think you'd just be pickin' nits at that point. I would say as long as you keep the temps high enough to keep your sugars soluble, you'll be fine in any situation that you're not trying to denature.

[DIRTYBIRD]

I batch Sparge and mash out all my brews. If i don't mash out it makes my lauter a bit slower. Not a big deal. I've never had a problem with getting to desired finishing gravity. I'm used to mashing out and my water heats up faster than it takes to mash so I'm not worried about wasting time.