Boiling a thick portion of the mash leaves you at risk for scorching the grain and being left with a burnt flavor in the beer. You want to leave as much fluid as possible in the mash tun. The portion of the mash you pull for the decoction is intended to be thick. This is the part of the day that I was not looking forward to at all. Whatever color change I can wring out of this process I need to get. Decoction can be done as a single, double or triple, which essentially dictates how many steps you will do. Doing a decoction is supposed to give you some color and flavor impact, but a quick internet search will lead you to the debate over whether the flavor impact is meaningful. In essence, it is a step mash that has you remove a portion of the bash, boil it and return it to the mash to raise the temperature. Now you can see why I was not looking forward to this brew day.Ī decoction mash is a more intensive process than a standard single infusion mash. My method for getting some additional malt character and color is decoction and a long boil. I can’t use the traditional Munich malt for the style so I need to make up for that somehow. So what I landed on after a week of debate then changing my mind last second at the homebrew shop is a take on a dunkelweizen. I’m probably leaving out some options, but I didn’t have much time to get this beer put together. Highly toasted oak isn’t technically a fermentable, but the challenge only gives us two months so there is a risk that the wood character wouldn’t meld properly.
Fruit is a fermentable so anything that would provide color can’t be used. So where does that leave us? Clearly any highly kilned or roasted grain is out. We could only use fermentables of 3L or lower and the finished beer had to be 17SRM or higher. Everything else is up to the brewer. For this brew, we were given no ingredients. Three brewers are given two ingredients or rules for their beer. Iron Brewer works similarly to its namesake. So I have to thank my homebrew club’s Iron Brewer competition for ruining this brew day for me. It is not normal when I don’t look forward to a brew day.