Franconia Beer Message Board

A couple of observations on decoction
Posted by Mosquit on 2016-09-08 22:26:59
Usual czech lager is made as single-decoction (one boil of one half) or (more traditionally) tdouble decoction (two boils, always one third of mash). Pilsner Urquell uses even tripple decoction, for example. 

I do brew lagers at home usually with double decoction. It brings golden-like colour, better mouthful, it also helps to increase the efficiency a bit. 

One of possible ways for double decoction is:
kettleA - do the mash into 35-40°C  
raise the temp by heating the kettleA to 50-53°C 
- now take one third from kettleA to kettleB
- in kettleB raise temps to 62, 72, then to boil (for 10 minutes) 
return content of B back to A. Overal temperature in A increases from 50 to 62 by that. 
- now take oen third from kettle A to kettleB 
- in kettleB raise temps to 72, then to boil (for 10 minutes) 
return content of B back to A. OVeral temperature in A increases from 62 to 72-78, depending if it was really just a third, or more, or less). 

Here - if you ended just on 72 - you need to heat it again in kettleA, to 78. But it brings some advantages (e.g. better foam duration) 

So you could se that it is needed to have actually two heated kettles. Also it is always important to ALWAYS pump "hot" into "colder", not "colder" into "water" to preserve the enzymes. 

That might be the explanation for you why they use it in that way. 
 
 
Followups:
                 A couple of observations on decoction by Nick B. on  2016-09-09 02:12:18
                   A couple of observations on decoction by Mosquit on  2016-09-10 00:59:50
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