S
SAHomeBrew
In my adventure of building my own brewing system, I started reading a lot about decoction mashing, and have found a 50/50 split on if it's even worth doing. Several articles refer to the "old days" of inferior malteries and why you had to do this. They go on to state that with "under modified" grains of the day, brewers pretty much had to finish the malting process before making beer. They went on to say that most breweries stopped, and went on to single infusion mashing when malteries straightened up and started producing higher quaility malts. Then they go on and state the following;
"Decoction mashing did not die. In fact, to this day most European lagers still use a decoction mash, even though their malts are now have a high degree of modification. And not just because they are steeped in tradition. Infusion mashing is not prohibited by the Reinheitsgebot. But, decoction mashing produces a richer malt profile with complex caramelized flavors that are the hallmarks of most continental European beer styles, particularly Pilsner, Marzen, Bock, and especially Dopplebock."
So what it boils down to is this; If you are building your own brew system, would you at least make the option to do decoction mashing, or with the quality of malts and the size of the batches 5-10 being the most common for home brewers, just use a cooler and do a single infusion and call it good? Or am I just wasting time and money in doing so?
"Decoction mashing did not die. In fact, to this day most European lagers still use a decoction mash, even though their malts are now have a high degree of modification. And not just because they are steeped in tradition. Infusion mashing is not prohibited by the Reinheitsgebot. But, decoction mashing produces a richer malt profile with complex caramelized flavors that are the hallmarks of most continental European beer styles, particularly Pilsner, Marzen, Bock, and especially Dopplebock."
So what it boils down to is this; If you are building your own brew system, would you at least make the option to do decoction mashing, or with the quality of malts and the size of the batches 5-10 being the most common for home brewers, just use a cooler and do a single infusion and call it good? Or am I just wasting time and money in doing so?