First Mini Mash From A Moron, The Day After..

Well, It's the day after and I'm thinking over the mistakes I made on this, and am gonna just hope for the best.

Things started off well enough, got my strike water to 170, added my grains a little at a time to avoid clumping, then poured them into my mesh bag attached to a bottling bucket.

Moron Mistake #1. Mesh bag elastic came loose, grains everywhere, cleaned that out of bucket, re-hung mesh bag with twine. Am losing heat now, but got everything stable within 8 minutes, put top on bucket, bucket in sink, added hot water around bucket to get more heat.

What I should have done: Put the kettle with grains in the oven to sit for the 45 minute mash....(Why didn't I think of this yesterday!!!)...


Part 2 : The Sparge

Got 2 gal sparge water to 155, opened spigot, re-circulated 3 cups over mash, proceeded to slowly pour sparge water over grains, wort going thru tubing into another bucket quite good, heated extra 1/2 gallon of sparge at this point cause I know I will lose some in the boil.


Rest of the day seemed ok, got the boil going, added some of the malt, and all the rest at flameout (hoping to avoid extract twang on this one), added the hops for 60 min, irish moss on last 15, and bittering hops at final 2 minutes.

Cooled the wort down to 70 in 20 minutes, added 1 gallon of cold water to 5 gal mark, pitched yeast. Done. (Safal US 05) Dry.

..........It's the mash I'm worried about, 40 minutes it sat there in the bucket, warm, yes, but doubt it sat there (even in the warm water) in the 150's.

Comments ?.......Thanks for reading.

It's hard to avoid mistakes on your first attempt - but you'll learn with each new try

Yes, I think it makes more sense to do the mash in your pot. I do a dunk sparge in my bottling bucket only after the mash is done - check on DeathBrewer's BIAB instructions below for a great primer on how to do this properly.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/

And since this was a partial mash I may be ok, cause the little milk jug of extract is at least a safety net versus an AG..

I load up the mesh bag and then lower it into the heated water, jiggling up and down a few times like you might with a tea bag. Then I stir the heck out of it with binder clips holding the bag in place. Put the lid on and a towel wrapper around the top (where most of the heat loss occurs) and let it sit. I usually open it a couple times to stir during the hour.

Best way to figure out temperature controls is to do a similar grain bill size every time and just adjust by trial and error from one batch to the next. If you miss by 5 degrees, just adjust by 5 degrees next time. Won't take more than 2-3 before you've got it nailed.

Yep, I got the hop part backwards, good catch !

But the error here on me was mash temp, It was still warm after the 40 minute wait. (added hot water from the sink to help it along). But doubtful it held up in the 150's in a bucket (Time to get a mash tun).......

But again, our safety net is the little jug of extract.......No nets in AG....

I did have fun though, and that's what counts.......

I also advocate the dunk sparge - I think for BIAB and/or PM, you're gonna get better efficiency AND you won't have nearly as many problems setting it up. Trying to do Vorlauf with BIAB may not necessarily be worth it - it's iffy at best. Fly sparging is definitely not worth it IMO. If you need to, you can conduct a mini mash with dunk sparge using a bucket as a temporary vessel to hold the runnings while you heat the sparge water in the kettle. You can measure the actual first runnings volume and then calculate your dunk water. Honestly, if you are going to continue to do mini mashes - even If you don't want to make a mash tun or go towards AG, I'd still advocate getting a cooler - even a 5 gal would work and should be pretty cheap - I got a HD 10 gallon cooler for $30 on sale a couple weeks ago - it holds temp effortlessly...

with the cooler, all you need to do is figure out strike water temp - say 5lbs of grain will drop the temp 10 deg and you want to mash at 150, heat the strike water to 170. Pour into the cooler and let it come down to 160, then add grains. This way, you preheat the cooler walls so it won't lose heat. If you put the cooler on cold tile or flooring, put a towel or something under it to retain heat. You'll hold a nearly precise mash temp - you COULD in fact even do the Vorlauf with the cooler's normal spigot.

BTW - the bittering hops are adding early in the boil, not late.

I bet your beer will be damn tasty and congrats on taking a big step!

I use my SS 5gal kettle for mashes, and I don't think I've lost more than 2-3°F over an hour without anything special. Two things that I think help---first it's SS rather than Al, so it has lower conductivity, and second, I keep it on a burner during the mash rather than setting it on a counter or on the center of the stove. This provides insulation by limiting the contact with conductive materials (electric burners are not terribly conductive along their length).

zeg said:

I use my SS 5gal kettle for mashes, and I don't think I've lost more than 2-3°F over an hour without anything special. Two things that I think help---first it's SS rather than Al, so it has lower conductivity, and second, I keep it on a burner during the mash rather than setting it on a counter or on the center of the stove. This provides insulation by limiting the contact with conductive materials (electric burners are not terribly conductive along their length).

Click to expand...

I use a SS kettle too and if I leave it on the burner *turned off* for one hour with no blanket or anything, I lose much more than that - 5 to 6 deg min.

Strange. I leave my burner off as well. I usually put a bath towel wrapped around the lid and a bit down the side, but it doesn't make a huge difference. I've been surprised by my results, and have been trying to prove that they're not real, without success. The only thing I've found so far is that, especially at the beginning, the temperature varies quite a bit from one point in the mash to another. It's possible that the average temperature is higher than I'm estimating, but I usually stir quite a bit and then call it the highest temperature that I find after that.