A man’s trash is another man’s treasure…
Sometimes people see opportunity where others see nothing but problems…
Not long ago I took on brewing a Belgian Wit, and decided to do it the hard way…
I basically man-handled three mashes at once… and like most men in the kitchen, ended up screwing up… scorched one of them a bit…
While I was mashing the wheat and oatmeal, I realized I had scorched some grains and the smell of burnt oatmeal made me question whether I wanted to continue or not… obviously I continued brewing knowing I was going to look for a smokey taste in the finished product…
Well, I recently kegged the Belgian Wit and sure enough, the smokey flavor of burnt oatmeal came through… and at first I was a bit disappointed because I was able to look past that and realized that had it not been for that off-flavor, the beer would have been by far one of my favorites…
The off flavor itself is not bad, but when you don’t get exactly what you’re looking for it can be quite disappointing… in fact I was disappointed enough that I wouldn’t have thought twice to just dump it and chalk it up to a lesson learned to do decoctions using my aluminum pot instead of the stainless steel one that tends to stick more…
But since I had the spare keg I figured I’d just keg it and play around a bit… experiment with force carbonating and stuff like that… after all the beer is drinkable… it’s not infected or anything… it just has a smokey flavor that doesn’t go with the style…
… and it was then that I realized I could actually use the beer to blend… I happen to have a Christmas ale, which is sweet and strong… I decided to blend the beers and found that the smokey flavor of the Belgian Wit and the sweetness of the Christmas ale balances each other pretty darn well!
Now frankly, I like the Christmas ale too much to blend the entire batch since it’s better as is, but I’ve found that before you dump your beer it’s good to experiment and try things to help distinguish flavors… This blend helps me see what a beer brewed with wheat and oatmeal tastes like if it were sweet… I can also get an idea of what a Christmas ale would taste like if I added smoked malt, etc…
It’s because I make these kinds of mistakes that I’ve learned so much over the last few years and this last brew is leading into a new experiment which I think you’ll enjoy…
I received so many emails about the adjunct mash and was asked why I didn’t just do an infusion mash…
The question I have been wondering about is whether a decoction mash is really worth it… or not so much if it’s worth it, but does it really produce a beer you can’t replicate by making other adjustments?
To answer that question I have decided to wipe clean all my planned brews and take on nothing but beers traditionally brewed by decoction mash… I will be brewing mostly German lagers and anything I can find that uses decoction mashing until I feel I have absolutely mastered decoction mashing…
… and here’s why…
I believe that most who are against decoction mashing either don’t fully understand decoction mashing, tried it a couple times and thought it was too much work or can’t really tell the difference in the finished product…
Now, I don’t doubt that they know how to do a decoction mash or that they are good at making other adjustments to achieve similar results… or my favorite “I brewed this beer with a simple infusion mash and won a medal”… yes I don’t doubt you can brew great beers without taking on Decoction, but I still want to find out for myself how much better (if any) decoction mashing really is…
…so here’s what I have planned for the next few weeks…
Since I just started my last semester (well technically it’s now a quarter) at ASU and had to buy overly expensive books, and the fact that my car decided just today that it needs $2K worth of repairs, I won’t be able to buy brewing ingredients for a couple of weeks… (oh cry me a river) but anyways… I will take the next two weeks to present the arguments on both sides of decoction mash… those who say YES it is worth it and those who say NO you can get the same results by making some changes…
Both sides have really good arguments, and we are going to put both to the test…
Until then… Cheers!
