deancox

Recipes 

I mashed at steady 152 for an hour, basically following Palmer's advice in his book for brown ales. What would have suggested? I understand you can get your mash temp too high and it creates undesirable flavors?

Straight6TT

Recipes 

Pitching at 80 degrees is too high and may have lead to the yeast eating up more sugars than it should have. This could be why the beer finished with a low f.g. and why the beer has less body.

deancox

Recipes 

So what temp would you have mashed

tgmartin000

Recipes 

Probably just a degree or two higher, 153 or 154. I'm just now starting to experiment with my mash temps. Over the spring and summer I made some belgians and ales that I wanted to dry out, so I was mashing everything around 149 to 150. My saison and tripel dried out to about 1.004 or so, which is in range for those styles. I'd think a brown ale would be about 1.015 or so.

But I've recently tried some IPAs I really liked that were really bitter, but with a bit of residual sweetness and a huge mouthfeel, like zombie dust, or 471 IPA from breckenridge. So my last pale ale was my first attempt at a 154 mash, to get my FG around 1.015 or 1.016, rather than 1.010 or less. These beers also had a great foamy head, due (I think) to more unfermentables in the wort.

tgmartin000

Recipes 

I haven't heard that. If you get your sparge temp too high, you can extract some astringency - but that has more to do with sparge pH than temps.

152 is always a good starting point, but for lighter beers, go maybe a little lower (150), and for heavier beers, a little higher (154).