THE AMAZING MASH TECHNIQUES AND PROCESS PART 1
We're going to talk about mash, we have much to understand but you don't know all of it. Let's work on the things that we can control and the things that make us more successful. I got three pots we got something to come.
There is a direct correlation between how high that thing floats your proof and trail hydrometer and what the proof is, so we can get instantaneous, audible because we're trying to develop this. Let's move on because this is just something in progress, I'm still waiting on a couple of little pieces to show up so that I can take this to the next step, and with your help, we're going to get there, we did it with the audible p ID, we could do but what I want to do is try to go through a process, the results are you can predict but impossible to control. That's my advice.
I get most often the Washington rye recipe. There's seven, eight, almost eight pounds of grain in there and five gallons. That's a lot of green, water and the green soaks up the water. Follow the process, but just make sure you hone your technique. Now there may be a lot. It may be almost a CV in a way because the recipe doesn't really explain in the net science detail about picking water pour sparging rinsing that it is going to absorb a lot of water, when those grains absorb if you start, and you've got this much water and you fill it in your grains come up and it soaks up all that water. When you pull those grains out, you've got this much water, I realized that let it drain or use fresh hot water.
We do sparge, I don't care if you call this a mash, a must. A wart. Awash in all the same thing fermentable sugars. So different communities have different names for different things. If you're a beer brewery have your own language. If you're a winemaker, you have your own language. If you're a whiskey maker, you have your own language, but they're all the same believe it or not the process All the way up into bottling or separation is exactly the same. In some cases, it may be just a little bit different for some of your specialty wines or barley wines, Trappist beers, things like that. But let's just leave that alone for right now. But once that happens, and you only got maybe three gallons left, I understand that all those water is still in those grains. All of that conversion is taking place if you've done everything else correctly, but you've got to raise these greens somehow.
Suspend them up and then pour water in. Some way if you could put a screen on top and defuse it, and let it, Leach, through all of the great that's helpful. How long do you do that? You do that until it's done. You want to leach out all of those fermentable sugars that you've got left in the green that soaked up all of that water is there something else you can use to help you with that? These are called rice holes.
The shells of rice they're dirt cheap. If you put a bag of ease in with this is probably about a half a pound, put a bag at ease. When all your brains what that does is it gets in the middle of your grains, it keeps them separated so they don't stick together. So it makes sparging a little bit easier. You know, it's sort of like it. Now it's gonna build a little bit more volume. Your grain bed. But if you can address it is helpful but is it absolutely necessary? No, please don't go out and think that you have to have rice holes. It's just another technique and see what we're going with this, so much to do so much to learn.
Really not learners just review. Because the processes are very simple steps. It's just how you get at those steps. We talked about the George Washington rye recipe, and how you can overcome that please work with, that's a wonderful recipe we make that every time I make that it lasts a short time. Today I'm going to make different matches, what I'm gonna do is blend them together. As a general rule you find what that you read, they'll tell you it's like two pounds of grain per gallon. So it's two pounds per gallon. I am more apt to reduce that because I like having more water than I do the green because I find it easier for me to work with. Now you may have no problem with this two pounds per gallon. It may work perfect for you. When it comes to sugar, sugar is one of those additives that two pounds per gallon is great. Because you have it all melts or liquefies but we talk about grains you know you're going to remove those grains at some point because you have them gone before you distill.
Two pounds to me is just a bit overdoing it, I tend to use 1.25 pounds around that area per gallon. Okay. The reason I do that, like I said I have a little bit more water to work with. Plus, if I'm using that water to sparge with that this is a technique not a must to clean this off be right with you. One technique for sparging is to take your container, or whatever it is your kettle that you're cooking in. We call it cooking because we're not. We're cooking, we're going to hydrolyze everything you know, we're gonna bring it up to the right temperature 180 degrees, give or take all depending on your recipe, you know, and then cooled down to 155 for the introduction of amylase to convert starches to fermentable sugars.
One way of doing this and everybody doesn't have access, but there are those out there who could just have boatloads of money. Go ahead and spend it. Heats and pumps, it's got a pump in the bottom it pumps your mash back up so that it sparked you. So it's a constant Spark. That's one technique and it's just a small pump that's on the side. It has a special pump because it's got to be able to withstand the heat of that mash, what it does is it pumps it straight back up at the top and it pumps it right back down into the center and then they've got in the grandfather. They have a screen that goes across through the diffuser and it allows that water to drip right back down. So this mash is constantly and there's an offset down here. So the greens are never at the bottom of the grandfather itself.
What it does is it drips all the way back through and there's a constant exchange of this volume here backup to this volume. So these are constantly running. It's very efficient. Now we want to try to mimic that in away. There's a couple of different ways to do that. This is probably the most efficient way. All of us don't have access to that but what do we have access to it? We have access to our standard kettles. I’m doing a bunch of different things but not necessarily distilling. It's just kind of making a mash. This is nothing more than the base Over turbo 500 I just take the column off and I'm gonna use as my source of heat and my kettle for making a mash. Then I've got this large one I’m gonna put on a new wave cooktop and it's got a screen, We're going to do three different ways.
Here's how we're going to do, the Magic erase first. I've got a very large pot and that's got a colander inside and it's got legs on it in the standoff is L probably about two inches, which is sufficient but the problem is there has no spout so what am I going to do it once I'm finished with the cook, I'm going to raise and it will set up. Then I'll siphon some of that mash off, and I'll reintroduce that back. I'll just put a screen on top as a diffuser. Now do that several times, fairly efficient.
That's pretty doggone efficient. It doesn't work as well as you know, the regular standard graindfather but that suckers like almost 800 900 bucks. The other method or technique that we're going to use is I have actually that grainfather cooker. The one has a spout that made a strainer goes inside fits perfectly inside the center. I've got about a half-inch offset on the bottom. So that's going to be a little bit less of an offset with this curve side have increased that offset around. I’m just following along, it drops all the way down to the bottom.
That way the greens never settle on the bottom. It never turns it off because it has a sensor. If that happens, they never scorch. I'm able to draw the water off or the mash and reintroduce it simple as that. Somebody uses that method. The intent of this is all to find out. They're all about the same, but of course one's going to be a little bit more efficient than the other. Just as your technique may be more efficient for you and that's quite all right. You don't have to do it this way. Just, please don't violate the process. Your technique, the way you go about it is totally up to you but just follow the process. Alright, and that is, you know, water temperature time those things that are important, they just make it happen.
The last one we're going to do is use at t 500 without the column it also has a spigot. That's going to come in handy because of what we're going to do with. I'm going to fashion another one of these screens or strangers to fit inside. I'm going to add a screen on top of it. So my standoff will be about five inches, that's going to allow me to do is set that basket. My green bed will be up here and I'll have all this room for these for my sparge water to run throw it. What is it three times was it eight times is it two times you'll know because you'll all of a sudden you'll see your green start to loosen up and get light all those sugars are gone out of that at the very end, in all three of these cases, we are going to raise that green bed just enough to pour our friends bit of water back in there, which that this is a beautiful thing, stop and think of it.
The grain in every one of these cases that grain is going to soak up a certain amount of moisture even if I'm recirculating it. But it's going to retain some of that. Wind up with less volume here than I anticipated or that I wanted. I'm going to increase that volume by using warm clear water, just to do my final rinse is not a beautiful thing.