Non Enzymatic Mashing, Take 2

Today's brew was the other method of Non Enzymatic Mashing (NEM). You can read about my overview of NEM HERE, and you can ready about Take 1 of NEM HERE.

The goal of today's NEM brew was to separate the mashing into two parts and combine them back together, hoping to get more contrast in flavor of the beer. Here is the workflow:

Today's recipe consisted of:
8 pounds 6 row
3 pounds Marris Otter
0.75 lbs Crystal 60
2 ounces Acidulated Malt
90 min boil
1 tsp gypsum & 1 tsp calcium chloride @ boil start
1 oz Chinook @ 60 mins
0.5 oz Simcoe @ 30 mins
1 tsp irish moss and 9 grams yeast nutrient @ 20 mins
0.5 oz Simcoe @ 10 mins
1.5 oz Cascade @ flame out

Like the partigyle method yesterday, all grain (minus 1 lb 6 row and the 2 oz acidulated malt) was ground last night and soaked overnight for 10 hours at ~ 36 degrees. I mashed the grain with 4 gallons of cold water to a little over 10 lbs of grain. This morning, the smell was again herbal, grassy, and vegetal and lacked the caramels of a traditional hot mash.

After lautering this morning and sparging with an additional 1.5 gallons to get 4 gallons of pre boil cold wort, I wound up with a gravity of 1.020. It failed the starch test, as expected. The cold wort was very cloudy and turbid. I now know what starch soup looks like!

The cold wort was heated until 150* and left to "mash," since 100% of the enzymes existed in this starch soup.

Meanwhile, the spent grain needed to be dealt with. There was still 75% of the starch left in there, and based upon yesterday's experience, there are ZERO enzymes left with that spent grain. I hit the spent grain with hot water and recirculated the wort until it also hit 150*, then I added another pound of 6 row plus 2 ounces of acidulated malt to lower the pH. After a typical 60 minute mash, the spent grain converted. Seems like 10% of your grain bill only needs to have enzymes to convert the other 90%.

The additional grain for starch conversion of the spend grain

After confirmation of conversion using iodine, I mashed out the grain, lautered and sparged into the kettle with the former cold wort which was already mashed out, combing all of my liquids together for a pre boil volume of 8 gallons with a pre boil gravity of 1.044.

From here, it was a typical brew. Bring to a boil and follow your boil schedule. I wound up with a post boil gravity of 1.058.

Take away
The biggest question with this split mashing is: Will this actually yield a different and more interesting tasting beer than doing a traditional single infusion mash?

Tomorrow I will be brewing the single infusion version of this beer, and in a few weeks once everything is fermented, racked, and carbed up, we will do an A/B taste comparison. That is the only way to know.

I had one hiccup today. One of my propane tanks ran empty pretty early on, which meant I had to juggle my heating between only one tank. This kinda lengthened the day a bit. Going forward? Make sure you have two FULL tanks, since you are heating two vessels at the same time.