Non Enzymatic Mashing, aka "Cold Mashing". Is this paralleling an art technique of range and contrast?

This is a new mashing technique that came across my radar. The owner of my local homebrew shop gave me a little talk about it today. It is called Non Enzymatic Mashing (NEM), or "Cold Mashing."

I like the term "Cold Mashing" better, because Non Enzymatic Mashing is kind of misleading. First let me explain what this is all about, then I'll tell you why the term is misleading.

This technique comes from Briess Malting, and involves mashing your crushed grain with cold water for 8+ hours, or if you can agitate it, only 1 hour. After this cold mashing period, you draw off your cold wort from the grain, mash this liquid at normal mash temperatures, then bring to a boil.

Why do this? Well, you can get two beers out of one with this process. Think partigyle. The whole point of cold mashing is to extract flavor, color, and body from the grain, with only about 25% of fermentable sugars, since you haven't completed a true starch to sugar conversion. What does that yield? A session beer. Low alcohol, but full body flavor. The article claims a 1.0-1.5% beer for a 1.050 intended brew (if mashing normal).

Now what about the rest of that spent grain that still contains 75% of the starch, yet little body and little color? After a traditional hot mash, think Belgian Triple or Belgian Strong, where it is all about the yeast creating flavor, rather than the malt, since what you will be getting is mostly fermentables.

So now why is the term "Non Enzymatic Mashing" misleading? From just hearing this term for the first time, you have to ask, "Without enzymes, how does the starch to conversion occur?" It doesn't. We know this, and this is why we strive for that range of saccharification temperatures of ~148-158*F to activate those enzyme and get that starch conversion. I think the term "Non Enzymatic Mashing" applies to the cold mashing portion of the brew, rather than the actual hot mashing of the spent grains after the cold wort has been extracted.

Application wise, you can do your session beer, then create your big beer with little body, OR! you could use both methods and combine them into one beer to create a beer with a lot more flavor range and contrast. How? Let me explain visually.

Back in high school, my photography teacher introduced me to a method where we split our exposures in half in the dark room, thus exposing our paper twice. We first exposed our paper with a high contrast filter and exposure adjusted to the highlight values of our image. Then we exposed it a second time with a different filter and exposure adjusted to the dark values of our image.

What happened? The following images are photoshopped to get my point across, but believe me, it worked!

Original

Exposure for Highlights

Exposure for Darks

Final Image

And the original compared to the final

Now, just seeing the original image on the left is still interesting. It is a pretty view of the Columbia River Gorge. But compared to the final image on the right, it is kind of washed out. By improving the tonal range and the contrast, the final image really pops out compared the original, right?

Now think about this same concept with your beer. Your "Cold Mash" is your darks exposure, giving you lots of body and depth, while your subsequent hot mash gives you a lot of the high notes of alcohol. Then you combine them together.

If this "Cold Mashing" approach can do to your beer what the above photography method can do to an ok image, how much better will your beer come out?

Whelp, there is only one way to find out if what I am proposing above has any merit. The plan here is to do two brews, side by side. One brew uses this new method, while the other brew does a straight up single infusion mash. Both beers will use the same recipe, boil, yeast, temperature. The only difference is the mash.

Here is my proposed workflow for the cold mashing technique:

I have decided to brew an American Pale Ale to test this theory out. This style asks for good body, with some hoppyness to balance it out. It also doesn't have too many adjuncts and no extra sugar added. Just malt, a tiny bit of crystal malt, and hops with a clean yeast to let the malt and hops do all of the talking.

Will update once both beers are done, and on the other process of cold brewing once it happens.