Speaker: Our tank of water, which we brought up to 79°C which we will now bring into the center tank called the mash tun. We will mix it along with the grain from the grist hopper in the mash tun, so that the combined temperature of the porridge that will have, will come up to about 66°, 67°C or 150° Fahrenheit.
The reason that we are doing this is because the grain that you saw before that we started with, was basically a pouch full of starch and enzymes. And what we need to do getting back to the analogy of us as brewer is basically feeding our yeast. What we need to do is, we need to turn that into food that our yeast can eat. So now yeast don't eat starch because it's too long of a molecule.
So what we need to do, is we need to chop that molecule up into simpler sugars that the yeast loves to eat. This is their food, and the way we do that, is we combine the grain with a measured amount of water at a fixed temperature and by doing so, that temperature will activate certain enzymes that are already part of that grain, of that seed that will begin to work on that long starch molecule and chop it up into little sugar molecules.
Now, it's interesting that this is one of the parts of the process in brewing where we can begin to start having a real impact on the flavor of the beer that will come out. So what it translates to again is that mashing at a higher temperature, we are producing a full bodied beer and a slightly sweeter beer, mashing at a lower temperature we are producing a dryer beer and a more alcoholic beer.
So, right now we are doing a process called doughing in which is essentially the stage by which we bring the water over from the hot liquor tank and we mix it with the grain dropping out of the grist hopper.
The water and the grain get mixed first before they both drop into the mash tun. They get mixed first in something called a grist hydrator, which allows the grain as it's dropping from the grist hopper to be sprayed with hot water. So that this way it assures that the grain, once it hits into the mash tun has already been wetted and is already moist.
Very important that the grain while it's in the mash tun, that all of the grain be wet so that we can extract the maximum or convert the maximum amount of starch to sugar.
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