First mash: Too hot!

Well, I'm right in the middle of my very first partial mash. I'm doing brew in a bag (of course I forgot the damn bag, so I'm going to have to strain the wort *into* my grain bag in a bucket before moving on. That was my first mistake.

The second was thinking my temps wouldn't hold, so I preheated my oven to 170, turned it off, and put my perfectly tempped mash into the oven. It started out at 154 degrees. When I checked it 25 minutes later (thinking the temp would have dropped) it actually went *up* to 165 degrees or so.

Ah!

I added some cold water, mixed back to 154, and left it out of the oven. It's finishing up the mash now. I'm hoping I didn't screw it up too bad. Great first partial mash so far, eh? :cross:

Nice! I did my first pm yesterday. Had to play around with temps, both raising and lowering, but kept it at 152* for the most part. And hour later I had 3 gal of 1.04 wort. After boiling, adding extract, chilling and topping off, I was very close to my target OG. My point, the BIAB seems to work well, even for us beginners. And man, it feels so good to create wort from grains w/o the help of extract!

Congrats!

Yeah, I wish I didn't screw up, but I guess now I know the oven method has its flaws. I'm thinking of letting it mash for longer than the planned 60 mins, hoping for more lower temp conversion, assuming I didn't shut down the enzymes with the too high temp.

Edit: 1 hour done. Down to 146 degrees. Tastes sweet and grainy.

You should be ok... I would prepare yourself for a higher terminal gravity because when you increase the mash temperature you begin to extract more unfermentables from the grain. If you are going to do PM's I would suggest spending 20 or so on a 5 gallon water cooler. Its a life saver!! Good luck

Sweet is a good thing! Sounds like you spent enough time at proper temps.

I was thinking of building a tun out of a bucket with tons of holes drilled in the bottom inside of a spigotted bottling bucket, like Charlie P. Shows in 'complete joy...'. But it really seems that with little practice, holding temps in the kettle is simple enuff.

Onipar, how much did you mash? How much extract are you adding?

BradleyBrew said:

You should be ok... I would prepare yourself for a higher terminal gravity because when you increase the mash temperature you begin to extract more unfermentables from the grain. If you are going to do PM's I would suggest spending 20 or so on a 5 gallon water cooler. Its a life saver!! Good luck

Click to expand...

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, I read that might happen. as long as it isn't a *ridiculous* amount of unfermentable, I might be okay since this is a pumpkin ale and I wanted it to ferment out fairly sweet. But not too sweet...fingers crossed I guess.

I actually have a cooler, I just didn't think to use it. Errrrg.

NordeastBrewer77 said:

Sweet is a good thing! Sounds like you spent enough time at proper temps.

I was thinking of building a tun out of a bucket with tons of holes drilled in the bottom inside of a spigotted bottling bucket, like Charlie P. Shows in 'complete joy...'. But it really seems that with little practice, holding temps in the kettle is simple enuff.

Onipar, how much did you mash? How much extract are you adding?

Click to expand...

I agree, with a little practice I should get better at the whole BIAB thing. I won't be using the oven again, that's for sure.

Let's see, I have 4 pounds of grain. 2 3/4 of which is base grain (2-row and marris otter), and 1 1/4 of which is specialty grains.

Then I have 3 lbs light LME, 1.5 lbs DME (1 lb light and .5 lb wheat), and .5 lbs brown sugar.

EDIT: mash gravity was 1.045 (after temp correction) for 2.5 gallons.

1.045 Sounds about right. I had to use the oven at the end to stay in the 150s, but even with the oven at 170*, it heated the kettle up quickly. It'll just take some tweaking of the process for me.
Hope it turns out good, whatcha makin'?

Yeah, a few tweaks and I should be good too.

I'm making Moon Hill Pumpkin Ale. It's a recipe I developed over the past couple months, and it's a first in many areas: it's my first pumpkin ale, my first partial mash, and my first recipe. :rockin:

I'm going to post the full recipe plus pictures and notes in the recipe database once I finish the day's brew.

Nice. I'll have to check it out.

I think everything turned out pretty great. When i wrote the recipe, I calculated 65% efficiency since it's BIAB and my first time doing it, but I ended up hitting 75% efficiency, which scored me an extra 2 points on my OG (1.058 instead of 1.056).

Smelled freaking awesome. Can't wait till it's done. :rockin:

The recipe for Moon Hill Pumpkin Ale along with instructions and notes can be found here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/moon-hill-pumpkin-ale-260064/#post3132505

onipar said:

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, I read that might happen. as long as it isn't a *ridiculous* amount of unfermentable, I might be okay since this is a pumpkin ale and I wanted it to ferment out fairly sweet. But not too sweet...fingers crossed I guess.

I actually have a cooler, I just didn't think to use it. Errrrg.

Click to expand...

I use my 5 gallon cooler all the time... go to your local hardware store and get a 5 gallon paint strainer bag. Works great to house your grains while mashing. I've mashed up to 10lb before and holds temperature like a champ! Cheers!!

BradleyBrew said:

I use my 5 gallon cooler all the time... go to your local hardware store and get a 5 gallon paint strainer bag. Works great to house your grains while mashing. I've mashed up to 10lb before and holds temperature like a champ! Cheers!!

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the ridiculous thing about it: I have *all* the necessary stuff to have mashed in a cooler. I have the cooler, grain bags (paint strainers from HD), and...well, I guess that's all I needed. I just didn't think to do it.

I've even considered converting my cooler into a mashtun, but it'd only be for partial mashes so I figured it wasn't worth it.

Either way, I think everything worked out. Fermentation took off running like a bat out of hell less than 10 hours later, probably due to my rehydrating *and* proofing the dry yeast.

Time will tell.

I don't want to double-post, but I did want to quickly update that I took a FG reading (10 days into primary) and it seems my hot mash didn't negatively effect the brew! :rockin:

The reading so far is 1.015, and I was shooting for 1.014. Full details and a picture can be found on the recipe thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f76/moon-hill-pumpkin-ale-260064/

onipar said:

I agree, with a little practice I should get better at the whole BIAB thing. I won't be using the oven again, that's for sure.

Click to expand...

Only reason the oven sounds like a bad idea to me is IF you can't get the thing DOWN to 155F. MY oven won't go that low on the dial but I can get it to that temp easily enough. The lowest it will set to is 175. I set it to that, turn it off when it gets there, then use an external thermometer with a probe to read the temp. Open the door a few times until the temp is just above my target (Say maybe 158).

Just make sure your oven thermometer is accurate.