Step mash and under modified malts

I’ve been reading about common mistakes with Belgian beers and it’s been noted that a “real” Belgian beer requires a step mash. The reason given for this is that apparently this is required for good head formation and retention.

The article also mentions that this will only work with under modified malts and not your typical well modified pilsner.

Given that malting effectively does the same job as a protein rest step (gets the enzymes churning away) what is the benefit?

To put this another way, what’s the difference between a well modified malt and single temp vs an under modified malt and step mash?

Topic belgian malt mash homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

It can help head retention and other aspects of the beer with the right grain bill, but fully modified malts don't benifiet from it.

Typically a acid / protein rest is applied to release the amino acids needed for yeast to produce good clove esters for appropriate styles.

Moderately-modified malts benefit from a protein rest to break down any remnant large proteins into smaller proteins and amino acids as well as to further release the starches from the endosperm. Fully-modified malts have already made use of these enzymes and do not benefit from more time spent in the protein rest.

http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/how-the-mash-works/the-protein-rest-and-modification

I believe the focus of the article you sighted, concerning step mashing, is to get the most fermentabilty out of your grains. It's not the most well written article I've seen, and somethings he claims would lead me to question his other reasonings. Mainly how he addresses yeast and Belgians. Yeast is a critical character to Belgian styles. For him to imply you can make a Belgian to style with Cali-ale or US-05 yeast is ignorant IMO. Though he recants that claim the yeast part reads like fiction.

About

Geeks Mental is a community that publishes articles and tutorials about Web, Android, Data Science, new techniques and Linux security.