BIAB help immediately please! Mash way too high

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befus

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OK, first attempt at BIAB. Mashed in at 160 and turned off heat on ceramic stove top. Mash dropped to 157 immediately and I thought ok that will settle at about 155 and finish at 153 or so and I'm good. Covered and went for a walk, come in and see the mash thermometer is a remarkable 164. Ceramic must be a killer. OK I'm screwed, live and learn. What to do? Add a pound+ of sugar to get the fermentables up? It was supposed to be a bitter, but now I just want drinkable beer. Suggestions?

Was an ordinary bitter with just five pounds of two row, so add three pounds of DME a tad of sugar and jump to ESB maybe?
 
Take the lid off and let the temp drop to 150F and let it rest for another hour. Maybe you can still manage to extract some fermentable sugar. Then check your gravity. If it's low you can throw some DME in. This batch will have a lot of body and slight sweetnes if you didn't denature the enzymes..
 
Take the lid off and let the temp drop to 150F and let it rest for another hour. Maybe you can still manage to extract some fermentable sugar. Then check your gravity. If it's low you can throw some DME in. This batch will have a lot of body and slight sweetnes if you didn't denature the enzymes..

Yeah :). This may be a bitter brown! Still fun and it be something, whatever that might be!
 
Put a few drops of wort on a plate, drip in some iodine. If it turns black no conversion get the temp down and rest it for 20-30 min. If it stays the same color your done. Mash out and start your boil.
 
I have no suggestions for this one.

What may have happened on is that the heat from the stove was still there when you turned the burner off. I had something similar today. I turned off the burner and had to move the pot off the hot burner to stop the temperature from continuing to rise.
 
If you don't have iodine to do a conversion test, just let the temperature come down and continue the mash for a while.

The "good news" are that there are some fine beers with mash temperatures around 158. For instance, the Lagunitas IPA brewer supplied mash temperature is 160!

Your attenuation will suffer but that doesn't mean it won't be a good beer. You could add some DME (as suggested above) to up the overall ABV or even a bit of sugar/honey (no more than 5-10%).
 
I have no suggestions for this one.

What may have happened on is that the heat from the stove was still there when you turned the burner off. I had something similar today. I turned off the burner and had to move the pot off the hot burner to stop the temperature from continuing to rise.

Its the ceramic top. They just hold heat for a good while, but I never figured on this much heat. Ah well, it's a beautiful night in the Ozarks, I'm licking my wounds with a Tank 7, and I learned something new. And BIAB sounded so simple ;)
 
The "good news" are that there are some fine beers with mash temperatures around 158. For instance, the Lagunitas IPA brewer supplied mash temperature is 160!
Your attenuation will suffer but that doesn't mean it won't be a good beer. You could add some DME (as suggested above) to up the overall ABV or even a bit of sugar/honey (no more than 5-10%).

Absolutely, it's just not going to be what I planned. I think it will turn out to be closer to a brown ale. A little sweet with a lot of mouth feel. I'll just add the two pounds of DME I planned and up the six ounces of sugar to a pound of corn syrup and have at it.

Thanks for the replies all.
 
The funny thing is that the ones you screw up end up being among the best beer you ever brewed! My first BIAB attempt was not so great, but the beer came out really good. As a matter of fact it's my house amber recipe now (although I have much better control of how it comes out now)... Just let it ride, and I'm sure it will be fine..
 
Hey guys, could someone clarify the major "problems" with mashing to high? I have been doing all my BIAB beers mashing in around 160 and they mash at 157ish for 75-90 mins, tempature doesn't drop when its 92* outside here in FL. I posted this and all I got was people saying my beer is going to suck and turn out very bad.... I think all my beers are great, I have even had a professional taster taste them. He even liked my beer over a Gold Medal winning Saison from Swamp Head... Does it just give the beer a bigger body? Still not completely sure what everyone means by this? More body as in taste and flavor, like a not a whimppy BMC?
 
Hey guys, could someone clarify the major "problems" with mashing to high? I have been doing all my BIAB beers mashing in around 160 and they mash at 157ish for 75-90 mins, tempature doesn't drop when its 92* outside here in FL. I posted this and all I got was people saying my beer is going to suck and turn out very bad.... I think all my beers are great, I have even had a professional taster taste them. He even liked my beer over a Gold Medal winning Saison from Swamp Head... Does it just give the beer a bigger body? Still not completely sure what everyone means by this? More body as in taste and flavor, like a not a whimppy BMC?

Well I can provide a simple answer, others my want to get technical. It involves enzymes, how temps affect their converting the malt starches to sugars, and so forth. My temp was so high I worried about any conversion at all, but it worked out. Basically the higher the mash temp, the higher per cent of unfermentable sugars. If you want a dry beer with very little sweetness you mash ath the lower end of the mash spectrum, say 149-152F. If you want some residual sweetness in a malty type (Scottish, some browns, etc) you mash at higher temps like 156-158F like you do. It just leaves a fuller mouthfeel cuz some of the sugars are still in there as they were not converted to fermentable sugar types. In my case I may only get down to about 1.018-1.022 because I mashed at such a high temp.

I actually got a brewhouse efficiency of 68%, which I view as remarkable considering the situation. Now those sugars are likely to be still there after fermentation turning my 'bitter' into more of a brown due to the malty, sweeter character it is likely to have, especially as I used WLP002 which doesn't finish very dry to begin with. My 5.5 gallons had a O.G. of 1.044 after all was said and done.
 
Is this just from grain or did you end up adding any DME after all?
No, I was doing a partial mash anyway and planned on adding two pounds of DME from the get go. I just mashed five pounds of American two row and two ounces of black patent. At 6.5 gallons following mash out it came to 1.020 for the 68% efficiency figure. Not bad all things considered. After the boil I added the DME and 10 oz. of corn syrup to help out a little and ended at 1.044, which was still a bit lower than I had thought it might be. It's perking away now, so we will see in a few weeks. Thanks for the help.
 
I mash high and got a BHE of 88% with an OG of 1.058 and FG of 1.012 to get an ABV of around 6%... seems like I am defying science with what you stated two posts up.
 
Don't ask me how, but this attenuated down to 1.012 and tasted very good at bottling. I'll give it a week or so to carb and about two to cold condition and see what I have.
 
Awesome, glad to hear it. Should be interesting- I really enjoyed my first BIAB which was a pale ale that got mashed super high as well. Interesting beer!
 
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