Now, I know what you’re thinking, is this just a brewer’s Faustian ritual involving the dismemberment of sacrificial horse’s hooves to create a jelly like NEIPA. And while this certainly sounds like something I’d be in to, unfortunately, in this context, it’s all about dismembering starch molecules from their granular form into soluble molecules, ready for saccharification, which again is unfortunately not linked to ritual sacrifice.
In grain, carbohydrates are stored as starch, a complex superstructure of many glucose molecules bound in different ways. Glucose chain primary structures can either be liner, as in amylose or branched, as in amylopectin. As these chains elongate they form secondary structures in the way of single and double helices. Such a double helix can wrap around itself to form a tertiary super helix of amylopectin, with the amylose filling in the gaps like a glue. This specially excludes the access of water molecules, allowing the complex to develop into its quaternary granular structure.
As brewers, we all want access to that glucose, so first we need to disrupt the granular structure, and this is called gelatinisation. At a certain temperature, as the molecules heat up, water can infiltrate the amylose glue and knock it out, disrupting the superstructure and popping the granule. Different grains have different granular superstructures and so they have different temperatures at which gelatinisation occurs. Barley is relatively low at about 61oC, while rice is higher at 72-80oC. Apparently there are more than 50,000 varieties of rice and so there is a broader range of gelatinisation temperatures.
This week we have launched our new Yuzu Rice Lager. When we made it, we gelatinised the rice at 76oC for 90 minutes, until we saw a visual change in the solid consistency of the rice, and then proceeded the rest of the mash as normal. Being my first time, I was unsure if we had achieved gelatinisation. But with a stupidity high yield and final gravity of 2P, I think we can safely say, it was worth all the blood, nightmarish ghouls in the brewery and the rest of eternity with Luke.
In grain, carbohydrates are stored as starch, a complex superstructure of many glucose molecules bound in different ways. Glucose chain primary structures can either be liner, as in amylose or branched, as in amylopectin. As these chains elongate they form secondary structures in the way of single and double helices. Such a double helix can wrap around itself to form a tertiary super helix of amylopectin, with the amylose filling in the gaps like a glue. This specially excludes the access of water molecules, allowing the complex to develop into its quaternary granular structure.
As brewers, we all want access to that glucose, so first we need to disrupt the granular structure, and this is called gelatinisation. At a certain temperature, as the molecules heat up, water can infiltrate the amylose glue and knock it out, disrupting the superstructure and popping the granule. Different grains have different granular superstructures and so they have different temperatures at which gelatinisation occurs. Barley is relatively low at about 61oC, while rice is higher at 72-80oC. Apparently there are more than 50,000 varieties of rice and so there is a broader range of gelatinisation temperatures.
This week we have launched our new Yuzu Rice Lager. When we made it, we gelatinised the rice at 76oC for 90 minutes, until we saw a visual change in the solid consistency of the rice, and then proceeded the rest of the mash as normal. Being my first time, I was unsure if we had achieved gelatinisation. But with a stupidity high yield and final gravity of 2P, I think we can safely say, it was worth all the blood, nightmarish ghouls in the brewery and the rest of eternity with Luke.
