Mashing out

Mashing out has several purposes. One of them, like you describe, is to halt enzyme activity. LIke you say, the boil will halt the activity, too, but in a traditional fly sparged brew the sprge takes and hour or more and coversion will continue the entire time. One of the many advantages to batch sparging is that you get through the sparge and to the boil faster, thus haltiung enzyme activity sooner. That said, stopping the enzymes requires a fairly high tmp for a reasonably long time, and few brewers attempting a mashout actually accomplish that. The other big reason for a mashout (and the reason I usually attempt one) os that sugars from the grain go into solution more easily and become more viscous at higher temps. This leads to a slight increase in efficiency. But mashout is by no means critical or necessary. I batch sparge my brews, and I heat my sparge water to 185-190F in order to try to get the grain bed up to about 165-168F. If I make it, great...if I don't, no big deal. If mashout is a pain for you, skip it...I bet you'll never notice the difference.

------------>Denny

Denny, thanks! You obviously know more about this than I do. That said, this is the first I've heard the terms "Fly sparge" and "Batch Sparge". Would you mind defining them, and describe your process for the latter?

The easiest way is to have you check this out...www.hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew. Get back to me if you have questions after you read it.

----------->Denny