Mashing

With a career in malt quality research, Evan Evans has had many conversations with maltsters and brewers about the practical aspects of mashing. In Mashing, he provides an informed perspective on the mashing process, ranging from foundational knowledge to brewing applications.

Evans coined the phrase "from grass to glass" to summarize his perspective on malting quality. He approaches the topic from a malt chemist’s perspective, showing how the equipment interacts with malt quality so that brewers can fine-tune the process to consistently produce the style and brand of beer desired or make the necessary adjustments to produce a new beer.

Over the years, Evans has learned that most practical advances in malt quality and brewing result from subtle adjustments rather than quantum shifts. To this end, he strives to provide a holistic understanding of mashing by encompassing malt quality, equipment, and process control. He also includes practical examples of what happens when the mashing process is modified-from mash temperature and time to water-to-grist ratio and malt grinding.

Readers will emerge from this book with a deeper understanding of the foundations of mashing biochemistry, such as the relationships between starch and starch-hydrolyzing enzymes and between proteins and proteases. Readers will be able to knowledgeably integrate malt quality with brewhouse engineering to develop new beer brands and understand how to modify the mash to produce lite beers and low-alcohol beers. They also will be able to target key malt and mash parameters to troubleshoot quality and efficiency issues that stem from mashing, including fermentability, flavor stability, and filterability.