30 minute mash, 30 minute boil - the 3 hour brew experiment!

[Bazza]

What with having a young family and with Christmas seeming to impinge itself on every aspect of your life at the minute (my wife has even put an elf seat cover on our downstairs bog  ) I'm always interested in trying to make a brew 'day' as short as possible to the point where it could become a brew 'opportunity' instead. I read/listened with interest to the James Spencer and Brulopohosy 30 minute boil experiment and how the differences with similar 60-minute boiled beers was barely perceptible, so last Tuesday I decided to give it a go, but with the extra step of only doing a 30-minute mash as well.

My brews are typically 17l, fermented under pressure in a corny keg, then transferred post-fermentation to a serving keg using CO2 so, when things go smoothly, a typical brew from start to finish takes me 4.5 hours. With the 30 minute mash and boil, my aim was to take that time down to under 3 hours. That's 30 minutes off both mash and boil, and the other 30 minutes made up of time saved heating up less water, heating less wort for a shorter boil, etc. The only exposure would be having to increase the 12g of Magnum bittering hops at 60 minutes to 17g at 30 minutes to get the same overall IBUs (according to Beersmith).

Here was my proposed timetable for the brew:

Night Before   
Fill water and add campden tab = 10 minutes

Brew Day
Time   Step   
19:30   Start strike boil / Weigh and mill grains
20:05   Mash in / 30 min mash
20:45   Start boil
21:15   Boil  / Dry Hopper prep
21:30   Protafloc & late hop additions
21:45   Cool to 40 / whirlpool / start cleaning up
22:15   Wort into fermenter, Finish cleanup & pitch   
22:30   All done   

Ambitious? Maybe, but I gave it a go.

Tuesday was a particularly cold evening, so bringing the strike water up to the right temp took 10 minutes more than planned, but a couple of the subsequent steps took a shorter time so by the time I'd started cooling the wort post-boil, I was only about 3 minutes behind schedule. All was looking good.

Then.... You'll see that the step at 21:45 stated to cool the wort to 40 degrees before whirlpooling. Well, this was the first time I tried whirlpooling in my current Burco/tea urn BIAB setup, in favour of the usual hop spider. At 40 degrees I pulled out the wort chiller, dumped it into a basin of hot suddy water and spun the wort round for 5 minutes using the plastic brewing spoon.
So, there I was with under 30 minutes to go on my schedule and no way of cooling my 40-degree wort to under 30 degrees for pitching. Doh!!!
I could have tried boiling, cleaning and sterilizing  the copper wort chiller again and dumping it in for another round of cooling, but I reckoned there was too much risk of infection and decided to let nature, and the cold December night do the work for me.....

....3 fecking hours later the wort had finally dropped to under 30 degrees. 3 hours to drop 10 measly degrees in, frankly, Baltic conditions! I see that Burco Cygnet in a whole new light now, what with its heat-retaining greatness 

So, the 3 hour experiment ended up taking 5.5 hours; that's an hour longer than normal for those of you who love your irony.

I know if I'd just dropped the temp down to <30 degrees prior to whirlpooling I'd have pretty much kept the whole thing to under 3 hours and I will definitely try that method again instead of using a hop filter. The hop debris clung really well to the bottom of the boiler and the wort going into the fermenter was the clearest I've seen for a while.

I used Magnum hops for bittering at 30, and combinations of Cascade/Chinook and Motueka at 5 minutes, straight into the fermenter, and planned dry hopping in a few days' time.

I dumped the wort into a keg containing Notty slurry from a previous brew, so I saved time not having to clean/sterilise a keg and hydrate yeast, but I could have easily worked those steps into the 3 hours if needed.

Doesn't look like the 30 minute mash affected the efficiency; the SG came out bang on at 1050:



And when I got up the next morning (only 5 bloody hours later) the thing was going like the clappers.

Obviously, I'm doing a pretty simple pale here; not some heavily involved style to which the 30 minute mash and boil would be ill-suited but this is certainly something to consider if you find yourself needing such windows of opportunity to get a brew/ ANY brew in.

Conclusion
Not a true like for like experiment per se, given the number of other variables (whirlpooling for the first time, hop combinations I've not used before) and the fact that I haven't a similar 'normally' brewed comparison, but I'll report back in a couple of weeks with my initial observations.


Cheers,

-Barry

[Hingo]

Mad man.

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[Ryan]

nice one Barry.  Must give this ago myself next opportunity i get to brew

[Fal]

I find sticking my plastic spoon on a drill and 'stirring' at speed 2 I can cool my wort (and aerate it) in 15 mins in conjunction with my immersion chiller. I haven't risked going without a hop spider yet though.

[Keg]

I feel your pain Bazza! Somehow my first attempt at doing a small brew with shorter mash and boil also ended up taking an hour to longer than normal through a variety of f&ck ups.
I've done shorter brews a few times since and it's actually a really handy way to get a brew in when you're tight on time.

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[nigel_c]

Any more feedback on this? Need to get a load of brewing done after the Christmas but newborn is putting the dampeners on my brewing.
Any noticeable dms or clarity problems with only doing a 30 min boil?
Efficiency drop at all with only doing a 30 min mash?

[Bazza]

Any more feedback on this? Need to get a load of brewing done after the Christmas but newborn is putting the dampeners on my brewing.
Any noticeable dms or clarity problems with only doing a 30 min boil?
Efficiency drop at all with only doing a 30 min mash?

Not a huge pile to report at this stage, Nigel.

I kegged it on December 26th. Clarity was comparable with any other pale I've done; clearer, in fact, due possibly to the whirlpooling.
Efficiency didn't look to be affected; the SG was bang on with Beersmith's prediction.
DMS... Not sure, as I only had a small sample when kegging. I was getting the piney, citrussy flavour you'd associate with a combination of Cascade and Chinook dry hops. There was a mild spiciness to it as well, but I'm assuming that's down to the dry-hopped Motueka (a hop I'm still a little at odds with).

All in all, no noticibly adverse effects with the 30 minute mash and boil. Of course the real proof will be in the first couple of pints pulled from the keg. Planning to have a proper sample in the next week or two, but initial signs are good.

Come to think of it, we're planning a Belfast club meet tomorrow week, so I might bring along samples for a proper critique.


Cheers,

-Barry

[Tom]

You shouldn't have any problems with a 30 minute mash. Once the wort on top of the mash is clear you're pretty much good to go. The hour-long mash seems to be a hangover from the old days of inefficient malt conversion etc. You know how traditional brewers can be. You would also be continuing to convert during run-off and coming up to the boil, as any lingering long chain carbohydrates will be converted by the enzymes suspended in the wort (which is why some emphasise the importance of the mash-out step, which I consistently ignore).

If you're doing a PA and mashing at 66ish with good quality two-row you'll have no problems there. I started running off after 40 minutes for a while, with no ill effects, dare I try 30?

Did you test it with Iodine to confirm?

[SlugTrap]

For comparison:

http://brulosophy.com/2014/09/01/does-mash-length-matter-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/03/11/the-impact-of-boil-length-ale-exbeeriment-results/

This guy gets slagged a bit for his "nobody could tell the difference!" conclusions for many of his experiments, but he does put in the work...

[Bazza]

Forgive my tardiness in following up with this.

First of all, the keg has long since been emptied. Here's one of the last pulls I had from it:



Turned out to be a nice, clean crisp, hoppy beer. I noticed absolutely no adverse tastes between this and any beers I've brewed with conventional mash and boil times. I took a bottle to our January club meet and it got pretty much universal approval.

So...
Would I do the 30-minute mash and boil again? Yes; for this style of beer I'll probably stick to this method. It definitely helps when you've limited time to brew; there's no reason why you couldn't do a decent 19-20L batch of pale in under 3 hours using a 30 minute mash and boil

If I were to change anything about the above brew it would be the choice of late hops. I'd probably drop the Motueka in favour of something more punchy like a Mosiac, Amarillo or Simcoe.

I can dig out the recipe if anyone's interested.


In conclusion: I'm sold!


Cheers,

-Barry

[Simon_]

I've started doing shorter or even longer mashes & boils so the brewday suits my schedule. Haven't noticed any difference with the mash. Changing the boil duration is a bit more complicated because you need to change your hopping schedule and account for boil off.

[Bazza]

Good to see it working out for you too, Simon.

Yeah, Beersmith does all that complex stuff for me. If you're doing a brew with mostly late hops, the changes are minimal; just a slight addition to your bittering hops and nominal increase, if any, elsewhere.

-Barry