by Kravin » Wed May 08, 2013 5:43 pm
I have been thinking about this.
in my current capacity of understanding distilling, I think boiling, if only for 15min after a long conversion rest would be more beneficial to distilling than leaving enzymes or grain in the wort to clean up anything left over. if you had minimal left over, then there's no need to add grain or not boil to remove excessive proteins from the wort.
If you mashed in at 60C and slowly brought that up to 70C over 2 hours, covering the entire saccrification temperature range, I think you would get better efficiency and full conversion and consequently more sugars in the wort.
Alpha and Beta Amylase work at different temperatures (As you probably already know) but work differently on the starch chains. Beta will break them up at random locations producing fermentable maltose, Alpha only works on the ends of the starch, also producing maltose but also more unfermentable sugars.
So by slowly raising the mash across the saccrification range, you're going to get good conversion at each end of the rest, as well as all the grey bits in the middle, which should give you optimum conversion.
the next part is extracting those sugars. this is where I think a mash out would also be beneficial to distilling.
rinsing (sparging) the mash with water @ 78C will liquify the sugars more allowing for better extraction of the sugar from the grain.
Essentially, you're trying to convert starch and extract as much sugar as possible from the grist for the yeast to convert into Alcohol.
the better extraction, the more sugar, the more food for yeast, the higher the ABV, the more bang for buck!
Now, back to the Boil...
For Beer, Boiling the wort lets unwanted gasses, namely di-methyl sulphide which makes your beer taste like cabbage and corn out. but I don't think this would matter too much for distilling and I don't think it would have any impact on the yeast.
But it will help in a couple of other ways;
It will coagulate a heap of proteins giving you some insurance against all that foam spewing up into your still. Also with an added whirfloc tablet (or some other type of kettle fining), it'll coagulate into bigger chunks and fall out of the wort quicker.
secondly, it will sterilise the wort, meaning that the yeast has no competition in it's hydration and growing phases before it starts fermenting.
After all, the yeast is the hero in all this, everything else we're doing is just to make a nice bed and banquet for it.
A healthy yeast makes better ... (whatever it's fermenting).
the big boys (the same as breweries) are a money making business and as such shortcuts (money savers) are taken.
I also assume that translating a mass production distillery to a back yard still, while the theory is the same, the practice isnt.
Maybe it's just my mindset coming from an AG brewer, and I hope It hasn't come across as me being a pretentious twat, but I think we're all in the same boat about getting as much goodness out of the mash > wort > ferment > wash as possible?
or maybe i'm just being a little over the top and the difference between what im suggesting and a simple one step mash and ferment is minimal?
Happy to be shut down, corrected and educated on any of the above.
Cheers,
Kravin
Edit: Schpelling coz eye carnt schpell good n that