This is really just for fun, but a few months back I did have access to a really remarkable (and through-the-nose expensive - we're talking about the price of an average car here) piece of equipment. It's some sort of a compact/super high tech photospectrometer. Anyway, I decided to "check that the equipment is in working condition" and do some brew-related stuff with it.
Neo told me that this year's Maris Otter had to be blended with Pale Ale malt due to the higher protein content from the harvest, so that really piqued my curiosity about how protein content varies between various malts. In classical brew science teaching, higher protein content contributes to both mouthfeel and head retention, but if done overboard contributes to hazy brews.
*Just a note - please take the results with more than a pinch of salt. The machine is amazing accurate, but I am not and neither is my methodology. This is purely just for fun and to see if I could get any interesting data out of it at the same time.*
I took weighted samples of various malts I had on hand, crushed them to a fine powder using a mortar and pestle, then dissolved them in aliquots of deionised water. (I use a deioniser at home for my carnivorous plants, but that's a totally separate obsession hobby altogether) The samples were loaded into the analysis chip using a micropipette and the amazing machine just did it's job. Here are the results!
Blank = control (deionised water)
P = pale ale malt
P2 = pale ale malt (repeat)
M = Maris Otter (blend from this year)
C = Crystal 40
W = Wheat malt
R = Rye malt
The results were quite unexpected. The pale ale malt consistently displayed high protein content, surpassing even conventional wisdom that wheat and rye malt should be even more proteinaceous. For those interested in knowing which brand it is, I'll let you know off-line. =D
Of course, there are methodological flaws which could really account for some of the differences. Wheat malt is hard as nails and remarkably difficult to grind to a fine powder, and this being a manual job I could've had some un-ground portions. In addition, I used only a very small sample size - in the case of the Maris Otter blend especially, there could have been a significant amount of sampling error. I'd also have loved to repeat the readings multiple times to get a collated graph (which this remarkable machine could do!), but I was just plain lazy.
I have more data on other components, but perhaps that'll come in another post.
1 comments:
Actually, its nitrogen in the Maris Otter. Has been for the last 2 yrs and they blend it with Tiple up to 30% :)
Your experiment goes to show the great work the maltster put into well modified malts today. Effectively we can skip the whole protein rest altogether and head straight to the sacchrification rest.
Personally, I find brews that went through the different step mashes with well modified beers actually taste inferior. It ended up harming the beer instead of helping it, since the maltsters have already done it for you.
I believe it was John Palmer or Charlie Bamforth who further confirmed this point.
But there is that distinct character and moutfeel that I taste when I drink homebrews that did those multistep mashes.
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