Mash Ingredient

Mash Ingredient

Mash ingredients, mash bill, or grain bill are those materials used in brewing from which a wort can be obtained for fermenting into alcohol. The act of creating and extracting fermentable and non-fermentable sugars and flavor components from grain by steeping it in hot water, and then allowing it to rest at specific temperature ranges in order to activate enzymes that will convert the starches to sugars is called mashing. The sugars, having been run off from the mash ingredients, will later be converted to alcohol and other fermentation products by yeast in the brewing process.

A typical primary mash ingredient is grain that has been malted. Modern-day malt recipes generally consist of a large percentage of a light malt and, optionally, smaller percentages of more flavorful or highly colored types of malt. The former is called "base malt"; the latter is known as "specialty malts".

The grain bill of a beer or whisky may vary widely in the number and proportion of ingredients. For example, in beer-making, a simple pale ale might contain a single malted grain, while a complex porter may contain a dozen or more ingredients. In whisky production, Bourbon uses a mash made primarily from corn (often mixed with rye or wheat and a small amount of malted barley), and Single Malt Scotch exclusively uses malted barley.