Beer Forum

Mashing
12 oz Corn meal (precooked)
4 cups of oats (precooked)
10 pounds Marris otter
.5 pound Munich
.5 pound cara red
1 pound carapils

Oh boy what a gluey mess that started out as. it's thinned up nicely after 45 minutes at 151F and the starch test is good. It was so dense and gluey that I had to split the mash and add extra water.

It made for an interesting voorlauf. Now I know why people prefer flaked corn.
It's already pre gelatinized and has the husk for fluid flow through the grain bed.

Adding a pound or two of two row to the cereal mash would have made the stuff a whole lot less glue like. Also this is a great argument for the use of rice hulls. Other than than, this sounds like an interesting brew. Let us know how it tastes when done.


Wayne

Bugeater wrote:Adding a pound or two of two row to the cereal mash would have made the stuff a whole lot less glue like.

There was 10 pounds of marris otter. Plenty of enzymes and it converted fine.
The "issues" were in the fine sticky characteristic of the ground corn.
It got in all the little spaces and plugged 'em up.

I vourloufed in a 3 gallon colander and still the material formed a cementious layer on all the sides that required I break it up repeatedly.

Pre-gelatinized flaked corn would've helped your mash and lautering. Bug is right on for the rice hulls addition. Those are quite helpful when dealing with goopy mashes. Probably would only need .5# worth .

I think what Bug was referring to is a decoction-like cereal mash (aka double mash), where you use a bit of your base malts and the unmalted cereal grains and do what is essentially a decoction step (raise to 155F, rest for 15 mins to achieve some conversion, then bring to a boil to fully gelatinize and break down the starches) before returning it to the main mash.

It sounds though that you did a single infusion and skipped the cereal mash.

HTH-

Oh I added half a bag of rice hulls.
Still all that corn meal wrecked havoc.
I ended up abandoning any reasonable effort at a voorlouaf
I figure the creamy colored stuff will settle out or I'll just use some fining agents.
Still it smells good.

This brew was kind of a Oh Gee I'll try this kind of brew day.
I used a lot of low acid noble hops early and through out the boil and then loaded it with Sorachi Ace at the end.