Talk:Mashing

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[edit] Encyclopedic confusion

I was reading the encyclopedic entries on beer from Encarta and the Britannica online. I found some discrepencies between wikipedia and the two encyclopedias. In particular, Encarta and Britannica stated that during the malting process, enzymes convert the starch into sugar, maltose. However, wikipedia stated that the conversion starts in the mashing process. Which one is correct?--Janarius 21:42, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that this is partially correct. It is my understanding that the malting process is effectively to begin the process of converting starches to sugars so that the mashing process will be a little more straight-forward. You 'could' mash with unmodified grains, but this would require an additional step in the mashing process in order to hydrate the grains in order to allow all of the soluble starches to be released. In other words, in a stepped mashing schedule, you are adding an extra rest at a lower temperature (35-45 Deg. C if memory serves). This means that malting makes this additional step less necessary, as once the temperature of the mash reaches about 65 Deg. C the starches get converted into maltose, while going above that temperature allows other fermentables (primarily glucose) to be formed. So basically what I am saying is that it does't seem to be a discrepancy per se, as both process allow starches to be converted to maltose, in Malting the process is halted mid-way leaving lots of remaining starches to be released with less effort (saving time and therefore saving the breweries a lot of money!), while Mashing simply completes a process begun during the malting, and allows other products to be extracted from the grains, such as proteins. John Palmer's How To Brew book has a bit about this at the start of chapter 14. Perhaps an interested food chemist might be able to shed some further light on this.--Slrobins 13:49, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

A lot of grains are fully converted now, which means you don't have to do a multi-step mash, that's true. And yes, malted grain will have some sugar in it. The bulk of the conversion, though, is done in the mash tun. --Stlemur 20:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

This article contains a great deal of information and has obviously been carefully composed. Mash article writers, I salute you. However, my feeling is that it moves to quickly into technical detail of interest only to brewers. A longer and better introduction for the general public would be helpful, perhaps also some history (as an encyclopdia article would have) and some cutting back on the level of overall detail (enumeration of the types of roller mills, etc.) --Shorn again 22:43, 17 August 2007 (UTC)