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Non-Fermentable?

muckypup

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I notice in beersmith that I can set any grain to be non-fermentable. When would I use this? Would I set it for crystal malts?
 
muckypup said:
I notice in beersmith that I can set any grain to be non-fermentable. When would I use this? Would I set it for crystal malts?

No, only certain grains are considered effectively non feementsble. Such as Cara-Pils which is like 3% feementsble and basically adds non feementsble sugars for body.
 
BeerSmith allows the user to set any fermentable in the database to a non-fermentable additive so that the user can specify a sugar, for example, which may be used for back sweetening, without affecting the predicted OG or FG of the recipe.
 
So most gains have starches that will convert to fermentable sugars? Even very dark malts like chocolate malt?
 
All grains start with starches which store the energy the seed needs to grow when it germinates.  Malting breaks down the most of the proteins which hold most of the starches in place and enables the starches to solubilize when in water and make them more available for the enzymes in the grains to convert the starches into sugars.

Base malts still have a good portion of the enzymes available to them to convert the starches.  Most specialty malts are made by bringing wetted, malted grains up to mashing temperatures where the enzymes present can convert the starches to sugars.  They are then kilned or roasted where the sugars, any residual starches, and the proteins in the grains can chemically interact to give us various flavors.  For crystal/caramel malts this typically ranges from sweet to caramel to toffee, to dark raisin and prune to burnt fruit flavors, all depending upon the temperature and time of kilning or roasting.  Roasted a bit more as in the case of biscuit, brown, chocolate, or black malts and we get flavors which range from deeply toasted, biscuit, nutty, coffee, and roasted/burnt.  These specialty grains still have some extractable sugars which can be steeped or extracted in the mash and will contribute to wort gravity.

As Ck27 pointed out, some of these grains contribute very little to fermentable sugars but they still do have some contribution, even chocolate or black patent malts. 

The setting of a grain or sugar to non-fermentable in BeerSmith should be done only when you are certain of any lack of extraction of sugars. 

 
hmmm...I had the same question since when I set grains as Not Fermentable they were still included in the OG Potential. So then, is there a way to back those out of the OG if you are doing a full grain, but only adding dark grains as "steeping grains"?
 
Right, the grains still contribute to the OG of the wort, but the FG is affected since the grains are unfermentable. 

When determining the effect on the OG, I usually zero out the amount of a given ingredient, note the resultant OG difference in the 'notes' tab and then add it back in.  When printed out it will show me the notes on the brew day sheet and I can go from there.




 
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