How Long to Mash Beer? 60 Minutes or LESS!? 

Kyle looking too skinny! Here's a deep fried burrito on me!

A wise man once said: "The difference between science and screwing around is that when you write it down it's science." You just scienced!

As a brewer I don't consume beer content on RU-vid but that thumbnail got me. Because THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. You don't want starches in your beer, it will not ferment properly (except if you use a dekkera), it will be as hazy as can be and you'll expose yourself to off tastes similar to oxidation's. 30 min can be fine if you do a mix mash step where beta and alpha amylase work together, if you have a perfect pH and a high disastasic power. But you DON'T check it by gravity! You do an iodine test to reveal presence of starches, don't stop your mash as long as it reacts, again you don't want starches in your finished beer especially if you don't intend to drink it all before 2 months after bottling.

Interesting experiment. I would have liked to see an initial reading, as well as iodine checks along the way. I'm not sure if specific gravity only measures sugar, or something more like "total dissolved solids". It's possible that you are reading the starch level in solution before conversion happens. Either way, interesting and entertaining to watch.

I'm more interested in the starch conversion than SG. Iodine starch test maybe? Great having 90% of your OG in 20 minutes, but not so great if your pilsner ends up with an FG of 1.025.

Hell yes! This aligns very well with our experience brewing Short & Shoddy beers with a 30 min mash - we tend to get a slight decrease in overall conversion, but it's not much, and it doesn't seem to have any qualitative impact on the finished beer.

That effect is happening because its a highly modified malt. The starches are already debranched. The rrst goes super fast. Try that with a pilsner malt and it will need longer If your pH is a little off like 5.5 it will also take way longer

Would be interesting to see a repeat with a 20/30 minute mash followed by a mash out to see if you reach your SG by the end of the mash out.

Maybe you guys should brew the same recipe of 30min mash vs. 60min mash and see if it impacts the final gravity and taste after (maybe shorter mash temps create less fermentable sugars, therefore a higher FG?)

How about doubling the temp to half the mash time? That’s gotta work… Great episode!

30 minute mash has been my go to, only will really push it beyond that if I have other things to prep, great experiment!

For smaller beers 1.060 and under I usually hit my pre-boil G in 30-40 minutes. bigger beers it might take me 45 minutes to an hour. Great content as always!

30-40 minute mash and 20-30 minute boil could considerably shorten brewing time.

Take it to the next level ,, Install a distilling parrot to your recirculating pump,,, you could watch it CONSTANTLY 🧐🧐🧐😎😎😎

Would be cool to see how this is influenced by mash pH and different mash temps. Very cool - clawhammer science is very entertaining!

Good investigation, but consider, how many breads you can bake for hungry people. For instance in Africa.

Time for a 30min vs 60min beer experiment

i'm a pro brewer and at my first brewery we never mashed for longer than 30 minutes. you're still going to be getting conversion throughout most of your sparge, even if you're sparging with 80C water that isn't going to instantly raise the temperature of your grain bed to 80C, it will take a while before you're out of conversion range and by that time you'll have gotten all the conversion you're going to get.

The majority of starch in barley malt is amylose and amylopectin, both of which are polymers of glucose. However, you use the chemical structure of sucrose, a disaccharide of glucose+fructose which I think is a bad representative of starch for this case. Well, just feedback on the accuracy of the scientific information.

Dr.Hans did a great video on this, you guys should check it out.

So there's a couple factors untested that could make for some follow up videos! Lower mash temps result in lower finishing gravities and 155 is kinda on the higher end, I usually mash at 145 and finish under 1.010 usually without any impact on body (as brulosophy has also shown), and the other thing is I find longer mash times including an overnight mash result in lower finishing gravities as well. The catch is that I find mashing low results in a lower starting gravity so maybe it all comes out to be the same alcohol %. Just some thoughts!

As you do your brew days going forward you should continue to test the gravity as you mash, see if different grains or sizes of brews makes a difference

Looks like he's had a few pints already.

Having experimented a little with short mashes, I've found I can hit my original gravity in 40 minutes, but I don't hit my final gravity when I mash for 40 minutes. A shorter mash makes a less fermentable wort: I always see lower than expected attenuation when I shorten my mash.

Hello! Just found your video. It is great! I would like to understand something though. Your target SG is 1.048 but all those readings are taken before sparging. Shouldn't the SG be taken after sparging ? And if it's the case, won't you finish way below 1.048 ? Thank you!

BruLosphy did some experiments on shorter mashes and the results were interesting. Did a 20 vs 60 minute mash and statistically the differences were unnoticeable. That was on a Blonde Ale. Always interested in ways to compact my brew day with 3 kids running about!

"Beer Mash! How Long?" Answer to that question is simple, till its done. How do one knows Its done? When there is no starch in your mash its done. How do one know there is no starch in the mash. Simple iodine test can tell you that. (mix few drops of mash with couple of drops iodine tincture in white bowl take it somewhere where is enough of light and look for dark colors like blue, purple or even black. if you see dark color bits then its not done. Iodine tincture is just iodine dissolved in alcohol. Its commonly obtainable from pharmacy.)

Mash temp matters. 155 is favoring alpha amylase which works quicker. I generally use 1 hour at 150-152 and don't worry about it.

Oh boyyy you use a refractometer for that

Another point that will be interesting to try out is to use a grain bill that contains about 30% of grain that has no diastatic power because it will change the ratio of substrate : enzyme. A 30 min mash might not cause a decrease in mashing efficiency, but any recipe that consists of more non-diastatic malt could possibly be problematic.

I’d just go with the 60 minutes to be sure to be sure! If it means spending 20 more minutes in the shed (whilst tasting fully brewed beers) then I’m happy to spend the extra 2KWhr👍

I was always had the belief that most conversion takes place in the first 15 minutes of the mash. It would be cool to do a bunch of experiments of mashing in at different temperatures at 30 minutes and checking the gravity and also the end results of ABV of fermentable sugars and un-fermentable with different mash temperatures. Cheers! 🍺

Could the basic quantities used here be factored up and used to say work out a tonne of grain? Also, what sort of yeast would you use for this? I'm interested in the confluence between beer making and distilling in this case. Its interesting.

I did a test like this with three "malts". All were 1L batches with 100g MO as a base and then one other had 100g Polenta (Maize-crush) added and one other had 100g italian Arbori rice in it. Mashed at 65degC (149F). I ran samples every 5 minutes for 1 hour. Results: 1/ The MO-only reached its final SG=1.024 within 10 minutes! That was quick! 2/ Polenta-mix stabilized at 1.044 after 35 minutes (so Polenta added 20 points). 3/ Arbori rice was the toughest and went from 1.034 after 20 minutes to 1.039 after 55 minutes at a constant pace of +0.001 every 5-minute sample. So for base malt 30 minutes seems plenty/enough but some adjuncts may behave differently but. Is it worth waiting the full hour to get those last 2-3 SG-points?

Thanks for doing this so I don't have too. Pretty cool results. P.S. I wants your shirt.

There is a gravity calculator to correct your measured gravity in mash temperature to gravity in room temperature. Also, for your experiment you did not need exactly the gravity, you need your gravity to be consistent (stable) after some time. For example if in 30' the gravity is X and in 0' the gravity is X again you can understand that the extra 30 mins were useless.

Very interesting, I mean, Maris Otter(as every british ale malt) has a slightly degraded diastatic power in comparison to a standard american pale malt or a continental european pilsner malt. I didn't think it would happen so quickly. But with these malts, it's apparently important to do it quickly anyway, because otherwise too much protein would be broken down - even without protein rest, proteolysis is constantly taking place - otherwise the flavour suffers. Simply because these malts have extremely little protein on board, the Brits are specialise in "converting" the very little available and already extremely over-modified protein into flavour as best they can. Through a correspondingly fast and sloppy brewing method - you Americans know what I mean, for us Germans "sloppy" is something very scary in brewing.

Very interesting.....30 minute mash coupled to a 30 minute boil brew day is shortened. Maybe run experiment again with a more complex grain bill? Mix in some dark grains?

Should've just bought a refractometer from Amazon, cheap as chips

Id like to think head retention and mouth feel is going to change, but i watch many videos with 30 minute mash and it works fine

Tried this two times. Got great results. Averaged at 1047 sg. Next step is this method with no boil. Even shorter brew day.

Sugars aside, Do you think that by doing it for the full 60 mins you draw more flavour out? So if you just mashed for 20 mins your beer may have a weaker flavour?

So what about keeping the mash at 20 mins but bumping the grist up 10% so you hit your OG within that time? Is the 10% more grain worth the time/energy offset?

Nice experiment. Would be great to see how a more complex and darker grain bill performs.

Cool experiment, I already do 30 min boils, now I’m trying this!

Maybe 60 min mash is a holdover from the past. They used to tell us not to turn the barley malt to flour but to break it into larger grits. Now a finer crush is recommended so maybe the enzymes can get to the starch easier so it takes less time. 🤷‍♂️

This might work in your fancy brewing system, but if you do it in a kettle on the porch in october, you would get another result.

Fun experiment, but you can just do an iodine test every 10 minutes to see if conversion is complete. 30 minutes is usually enough.

Since this is a set and forget with the equipment you have, there is little benefit to reducing the time. You will need that hour for other peeps anyway. So, why not make sure you can extract as much as possible to begin with.

I would say, based on what you find. 20 minute mash plus mash-out should be enough.

That's great info to know, thanks mate 👍from Down under.

Question is how does a short mash change the taste and "feel". Is it lighter, is it loosing full-bodyness, how ist the foam. I am not an expert, but time and temperature level are having different impacts on the beer. On the other hand, in case the taste is same or at least good, who cares

It doesn’t surprise me that the mash out step didn’t increase your gravity. It won’t help with extraction of sugars as the step is there simply to denature amylases (and any other enzymes in the mash).

I always do 30 min mash.. Thanks for doing this

I can't get my mash to 155 degrees , it boils at 100... what was the gravity at 0 mins?

Don't we boil for an hour to eliminate some of the residual bacterial contamination and DMS?

iodine !!! at 20 min for sure you are measuring some starch + sugar...

Thanks for the videos and thanks for being an interesting character too. 🙂

Check out Brulosophy podcast.. they do a “short and shotty” brew…

Iodine... If you can find it. Great video, cheers!

could have made the normal 60' mash and took a sample every 10' then measured them.

Mashout is a waste of time in my humble opinion, I never bother.

Great video with some cool results. I would love to see some additional experimentation on this. Using iodine (as has been mentioned in other comments), mashing for 90-120 mins to see if anything changes further, taking a 0 min measurement (or 1-2 min since you'd want to mix the grain in properly first) and a second grist with a lower diastetic power. Could be a video for the future, two mashes at the same time, one with 100% maris otter the other with maybe 50-80% maris otter and rest some specialty, mash for 2 hours and measure gravity every 10 mins.

Remember,It's only science if u write it down

“May-surement” 👌🏽👍🏽

I really wanted to know the answer!! Thanks guys 🙌

Do u think it’s the same for BIAB???

Re-run at 15, 30 and 45 minutes

My dude... No replicates?

Would you expect the same results if you were to mash in at lower temperatures and increased after some time. Or do you think this works only at constant 155°F - because obviously thats what the hydrometer has been calibrated for? I am asking because different temperature stages also influence the sugars and taste of the beer in the end, yet constant 155°F is quite convenient. Cheers from Germany

Did you end up measuring the mash ph? I feel like that would have an impact on the efficiency.

Wow. First view :D.

Soooooo much better than video 'reacting to Joshua Weissman'... Nice and informative... Keep it up, light and fun... 😉

At one point you were explaining that the diastatic power of the base malt needs to convert the starch in the specialty grain. ... But it's worth pointing out that steeping specialty grain in LME or DME brews is still a thing. If it did take longer because the enzymes are working on more starch, you could still just steep the specialty grains instead of trying to mash them

Would like to see 2 identical beers being made from the same mash. Half drawn off after 40 mins. The other half at 60 mins. Then tasted against each other once brewed.

And everyone knows now you only need a 30min boil, brew days just got a whole lot quicker!

What about mashing at 160?

I would think that pre-converted starch would also add to the gravity. So not boiling it for long enough is going to ensure that it's not converted enough, right? You're measuring the density of the water, not just the sugar content, right?

Great exbeeriment! I have been mashing for 45 min for a while and hit my numbers. May have to shave off 5 min 😂🍺

Wouldn’t an iodine test tell you if the starches converted or not? Probably be easier and a cool color demonstration at that as you through all the iterations during the mash.

Every time I try to shorten my mash up (45 minutes) some how much efficiencies suck.

Thanks man! I wonder if you mash out at 30min the number will keep the same

This is a great experiment cheers for your dedication to make our brew days better 👍🍻

Great beerxperiment! For those of us who don’t recirculate during the mash a longer mash time might get you to a higher gravity since the grain bed is not being continuously rinsed. Advantage: Clawhammer!

Most likely a link between the level/goal SG and mash time. Bigger the beer, more mash time necessary. Especially for malts with less DP, e.g. stouts with roasted malts.

Excellent information, would be interesting to try the same test with different grains.

What’s was the pH throughout the mash? Does that affect the extraction and starch conversion?

What about just a refractometer? I feel its easier to get a proper reading on thoose

Very interesting! I'll repeat the experiment on my next brew!

Enjoyed the experiment. Link to the mash temp thermometers?

The molecular structure of starch is incorrect. You have drawn sucrose (glucose + fructose). Starch is composed of amylose and amylopectin (100% glucose)

Thank you!

great experiment but using a refractometer may have been a bit easier.

Would a shorter mash time also extract as much flavour as a longer mash

result,

Interesting results! Thanks so much for doing this guys!

man, the "How you do science?" broke me hahahahahahahaha

It depends very much on the temperature. Last time I mashed for 2 hours at 145 degrees f (63 c) and I got way higher OG than calculated. You can mash as long as you have enzyme activity but the enzymes get denatured faster the higher mash temp you have. At 155 degrees the enzymes don't last long, especially the important beta amylase which is responsible for creating the fermentable sugars.

Clawhammer Science Supply

Great video love the content and the knowledge that you share