Double Mashing

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jeddere
Posts: 46
Joined: Fri May 20, 2011 5:07 pm

Double Mashing

Post by jeddere »

Did a double or recirculated mash recently. Seemed a good way to get a high gravity all grain wort without doing a split runnings from the mash. Anyone else tried it?

Roughly did this:

1st Mash
41% of grist
Mash in with liquor to grist ratio 3 L / kg
Sparge with 2.5 L water / kg grist
First mash runnings approx 4.25 L / kg grist

2nd Mash
59% of grist
Mash in with all of first mash runnings. This is roughly 3 L / kg (4.25 x 41/59 = ~3)
Sparge with 2.5 L water / kg grist

Ended up with an OG of 1.093 at a mash and lauter efficiency of 80%.
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EckersKlein
Posts: 122
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2012 11:42 pm

Re: Double Mashing

Post by EckersKlein »

So if I understand this correctly, the idea is to mash "normally", sparge once, then mash again with newly added grain? Sounds nifty. Is the motivation to avoid having too low a liquor-to-grist ratio when using butt-loads of malt, i.e., when you wish you had a bigger mash tun?

That does sounds like pretty darn good lauter efficiency for a beer that big. How does that compare to your single mash efficiency?

-Eric
jeddere
Posts: 46
Joined: Fri May 20, 2011 5:07 pm

Re: Double Mashing

Post by jeddere »

EckersKlein wrote:So if I understand this correctly, the idea is to mash "normally", sparge once, then mash again with newly added grain?
Yes, with the grist from the first mash discarded before adding the 2nd mash grist. The trick is to scale the mashes so that the total runoff from the 1st mash is the correct volume for mashing in the 2nd mash. As a bonus this liquid only needs reheating a few degrees to hit strike temp for the 2nd mash.
The sparge water for the 2nd mash is "new".
EckersKlein wrote:Is the motivation to avoid having too low a liquor-to-grist ratio when using butt-loads of malt, i.e., when you wish you had a bigger mash tun?
I wanted to do a strong all grain beer without loosing lots of efficiency. I don't think I'd have got near that efficiency at that gravity with a single mash in a sufficiently large mash tun without splitting the runoff into a high gravity first runnings and low gravity second runnings.
In this case I wanted a full batch worth of strong beer but didn't want loads of second runnings to have to make beer out of.
EckersKlein wrote:That does sounds like pretty darn good lauter efficiency for a beer that big. How does that compare to your single mash efficiency?
From memory its usually 75-85%.
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