Trying to specify a schedule for a "turbid mash" f

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Steve973
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Trying to specify a schedule for a "turbid mash" f

Post by Steve973 »

I am thinking about trying a lambic soon, and I wanted to specify a mash schedule like the "turbid mash" specified in "Wild Brews" by Jeff Sparrow. I would appreciate any help in setting this schedule up in Beer Tools Pro. I am unclear about the steps that instruct me to remove a percentage of the mash and add it to the kettle, and I don't exactly know what to do with the percentages in BTP. The schedule looks like this:

Assume 2 quarts per pound of grain
1. Dough in with 20% of the water to achieve 113F and rest for 15 minutes
2. Add 20% water at 212F to achieve 126F and rest for 15 minutes
3. Remove 33% of the liquid and heat in a kettle to 190F and hold
4. Add 30% of the water at 212F to raise the mash to 149F and rest for 45 minutes
5. Remove 50% of the liquid and add to the kettle and reheat to 190F and hold
6. Add 30% of the water at 212F to raise the mash to 162F and rest for 30 minutes
7. Transfer most of the liquor in the mash tun, approximately 38% of the total volume of mash liquor, to the primary kettle and begin to heat
8. Add contents of the kettle to the mash to raise it to 172F and rest for 20 minutes
9. Vorlauf to remove husks
10. Sparge at 190F until gravity is less than 2 degrees Plato

Thanks in advance for any assistance! I'm going to need it, especially with how silly-complicated the mash schedule is.

Steve
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billvelek
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I don't think that your recipe/schedule is possible

Post by billvelek »

Steve, when I read your schedule, it intuitively struck me as impossible to add a quantity of boiling water (212F) to that particular quantity of mash at 113F to achieve 126F, given what that mash consists of. For instance, if you have 1 pound of grain and you start with .8 pints of water (20% of your 2qt/lb), you have a mass of only about 1.8 pounds at 113F that you're trying to increase to just 126F with a little less than half that mass at 212F. That is, unless your mash tun is one heck of a heat sink, and since you didn't mention anything about that (the thermal qualities of your tun), I couldn't enter that into BTP. Anyway, I tried to build a schedule with BTP using 10 pounds of grist and 20 quarts of total water; the dough in of 20% required 4 quarts at 134F to attain the target 113F (this was without any thermal mass values for the tun). But for the next step (an infusion), I set the target temp at 126F and the infusion volume at 4 quarts per your recipe and BTP is telling me that the infusion temp is only 145.2F -- which is a FAR cry from 212F, even with anticipated losses to thermal mass of the tun. I stopped at that point because I'm convinced it is impossible to follow your recipe -- at least without the thermal values for your tun.

At any rate, I've never heard of a 'turbid mash', so I'm interested. I am, however, concerned about the advice to sparge at 190F. That is contrary to all conventional brewing wisdom that I've ever heard of.

Wish I could be of more help.

Cheers.

Bill Velek
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Running BTP v1.5.3 on WinXP 2005 SP3 w/AMD Athlon 64@3800+, 1GigRam, Res 1024x768
Steve973
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Post by Steve973 »

Thanks for the reply. I encountered the same issues that you found. It really didn't seem to add up. Anyway, the "turbid mash" is the mash style for lambics, and you can read about it in the book I mentioned. It's available on amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Brews-Cultur ... 961&sr=8-1

And if you want to read about a turbid mash without picking up that book, you can look at this link:

http://brewery.org/library/LambicD0530.html

Maybe there is a misprint in the book. I'll look for more resources that talk about this method. The extra-hot sparge will leech tannins into the wort, but with the long aging, there will be no noticeable astringency when the beer is mature, according to the book.
Steve973
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Post by Steve973 »

So, even if the temperatures are not right for these steps, how would I specify the part where I drain out a certain amount of the mash liquid? Would that be what beer tools considers to be a "transfer"? I'm just wondering how to specify the steps, regardless of temperature. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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slothrob
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Post by slothrob »

I don't think a Transfer will work for this, I believe it refers to the moving of the mash to another vessel, as when a seperate mash and lauter tun are used.

You can try using Decoction steps, but the predicted temperatures may be off for a Turbid Mash, where liquid is heated instead of thick mash. There are other problems, was well.

How you could try to use BTP for your steps:
1. Mash in
2. Infusion
3. You could try a Decoction, but here you start to require a step unsupported by BTP, which will expect you to add the decoction back before the next step.
4. Infusion could be used for this, but the value will be confused by the problem with the previous step.
5. Well, you see the problem by now, and it just gets worse as you go along.

I think the best thing to do is to use the notes section to record your procedure, but use the Infusion Temperature Mash Calculator under Window in the Menubar to calculate all your steps as Infusions, correcting for the volume changes as you pull off your volumes.

If you want, yo can use the Schedule area to set up a simple mash that will allow you to perform steps 1 and 2, doing all the intermediate math in the Infusion calculator. Step 8 would then be afake Infusion step to get you to 172
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paintbomb
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Post by paintbomb »

This issue should be resolved. It shouldnt be very hard to remove liquid during the mash schedule. Please incorporate this in an update.

I too am trying to do a turbid mash schedule and it is impossible in beertools.


please fix
cheers
beejay oslon
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Re: Trying to specify a schedule for a "turbid mash" f

Post by brewnewbFTH »

Stumbled on to this thread, so sorry for zombie posting. A group of us tomorrow are brewing lambics and I wanted to put the turbid mash schedule into a recipe.

Someone also ran across this in 2007: Does Beertools Pro 2.0 now have the necessary tools/features to allow for a true turbid mash schedule as outlined in Jeff Sparrows' "Wildbrews"? Or is this just too specialized to make it worth coding?
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