When to Add Amylase Enzyme to Beer
The process that is seemingly so simple somehow becomes more complicated as we make tweaks and adjustments to suit our, and our customers’, needs. Naturally occurring compounds are isolated and reproduced in labs in order to help us along our way, and while we should be grateful for their existence, we also want to be careful that we are not making more problems for ourselves than necessary. The question of when to add amylase enzyme to beer is one such situation.
Basic Brewing: 101
Brewing at its most basic is quite simple from our end. It was mastered thousands and thousands of years ago by small craft brewers. And by craft brewers I mean mothers ensuring their families had a safe and healthy drink to go along with meals and pub owners who wanted to provide a frosty, frothy beverage for their guests.
Brewing was discovered more than invented as no one had any idea what yeast or fermentation was then thousand years ago. People settled down, domesticated, and began growing crops. Then, they began experimenting with what was possible with those crops. Cereal grains are easy to grow, so people would have had those in abundance, and over time, they used different techniques to make those grains more enjoyable.
Of course they would have made breads and cereals, but they also began working on toasting techniques to bring out different flavors. It also stands to reason that, when they realized how glutinous, rich and thick the liquid in which the grains sat was, that they would make a kind of gruel from the grains. You could boil toasted grains in water, essentially creating a tea, and then allow the grains to sit and soak, or brew, if you will.
Then, when you strained the grains out and had only the liquid, you would have a sweet, thick beverage to enjoy that was high in nutrients.
Now, if you leave the beverage sitting, let’s say you made a big batch, for days at a time, eventually, you would have made beer.
That’s right.
Local, wild yeast would be attracted to that sweet beverage and fermented it on the spot. It doesn’t take long, only a few days.
The brewer would see the frothing and foaming, testing it along the way, and find the end result was a brew that left the drinker a bit heady.
That is really all there is to beer.
Over time herbs were added for a bit of bitterness and preservation, and, with the exception of various grains, colder and hotter temperatures, and lighter and darker roasts, beer has been brewed in the same way ever since.
What we didn’t realize throughout all of those years was that there was much more to the process than we realized. As we toast grains, the molecular makeup of those grains changes in many ways. The way that matters most to us is the shift from non-fermentable sugars to fermentable sugars, or from starch to glucose.
As we boil the grains, more molecular changes take place.
As we ferment, an entire biological alchemy takes place with chemical reactions turning sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide along with hundreds of other micronutrients.
What Is Amylase Enzyme?
The amylase enzyme is just one part of that incredible process. An enzyme breaks things down, and the amylase enzyme is responsible for converting starches to sugars. Essentially, starches are long chains of sugars strung together. The amylase enzyme enters the process and breaks those chains up so we’re left with smaller, more digestible sugars.
In our bodies, the amylase enzyme is present for digestion, breaking food down for our stomachs and then being killed off by our stomach acids.
In plants, the proteins carry the amylase enzyme, which is what happens in beer. As we toast grains, the amylase enzyme breaks down longer chain starches into smaller chain sugars, ready to be consumed by yeast. It is naturally occurring, and for thousands of years brewers never had to know about it or think about it.
However, once we started experimenting with brewing in modern times to make things like light beer, we started adding ingredients we had never added before. We call these added ingredients adjuncts.
The more adjuncts we have in beer, the more we interfere with the natural process. Basically, the more we get in the way of the amylase enzyme.
In light beers, for example, adjuncts are included to help rid the beer of carbs and calories. However, this process makes it difficult for naturally occurring amylase enzyme to do its job, so we have to add a bit more to help the process along.
When to Add Amylase Enzyme to Beer
If you find yourself in a position to add amylase enzyme to your brew because you’ve added adjuncts that are interfering with the breakdown of your starches into sugars, it is a quite simple process.
Add ¼ teaspoon to 5 gallons of brew during the mash process, and the amylase enzyme will take it from there, breaking down your long chain starches for you and producing the fermentable sugars you need to get a great brew.
Of course, first be sure you need to interfere at all.
Sometimes, we get carried away with mastering our craft and we try to improve upon a process that is already perfected. Adjuncts are rarely necessary in the development of the beer process, and often what we need to do is go back to the drawing board and see what is going on with our ingredients that makes us feel we need adjuncts.
Traditional scratch brewing calls for very little interference. Rather, it is our job as brewers to observe and engage with our few ingredients along the way to nurture the process.
Still, with modern brewing, there will be times when adjuncts are critical to get the job done, and amylase enzyme is there when you need it.
Cheers!
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Sources:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557738/
- https://www.morebeer.com/products/amylase-enzyme.html
- https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/wyhiNIcbe5/
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