First all grain mash question

I've been trying to get ready for my first all grain brew this Sunday. I've picked out a recipe "lil sumpin sumpin" clone from a byo magazine. The recipe calls for a 45 min mash but it seems like an hour is more standard. Do I stick to the recipe or go with the longer mash? I'll be batch sparging and the grain bill is as follows:
10 lb 2 row pale
4 lb white wheat
1 lb flaked wheat
2 oz victory malt

Thanks for the help

I would stick with 60 min. 45 is probably ok, but the prevailing thought is 60 should be plenty of time for full conversion.

Yeah, I've been planning on 60 the whole time. Just had a doubt slipping into my mind that the mash time change would have some kind of detrimental effect on the beer.

Go with 60. After you've been at it a little bit and test how well your water plays with the grain, you could find you only need to mash for 20-45 minutes. But 60 is only ensuring good conversion, it will never hurt the beer.

Chances are that conversion will happen within the first 30 minutes, but letting it go longer is a safe bet. 60 minutes is my minimum, regardless of what a recipe says. That way, if there's any areas that didn't get well mixed, they'll have a better chance at getting saturated and thus convert into sugar.

Good luck on your first AG! It's a blast!

Awesome. That's what I thought. Just don't want to get off on the wrong foot.

Conversion time is REALLY dependent on your crush. If you have a great crush, you could get nearly full conversion in 15 minutes. If you have a mediocre crush (eg average home brew store), you probably won't even get full conversion in an hour. My local store's crush takes about 90 minutes for full conversion.

So if I crush my grain with a rolling pin, I should mash for like, two days?
I just bought ingredients for my first all grain batch, but I'm too cheap to buy a mill at this point.

Test for conversion using Iodine.


If the rolling pin is wooden and has been used for rolling out larded pie crust or butter cookies. You may need to wait a light year or three for conversion. If it was only used for bashing heads or the occasional squishing of a cockroach. Two or three days will be fine.

It was a "not so local" hbs crush, and since it's my first attempt, I don't really have any way of knowing if it was a good one or not. I might go ahead and mash 90 minutes or so just to make sure. Anyone had any problem keeping a rubbermaid picnic cooler tun at mash temp for 90 minutes? Will I need to add some water at some point? I think I remember seeing someone who mashed for 60 minutes and lost 1 deg.

Mutt98 said:

It was a "not so local" hbs crush, and since it's my first attempt, I don't really have any way of knowing if it was a good one or not. I might go ahead and mash 90 minutes or so just to make sure. Anyone had any problem keeping a rubbermaid picnic cooler tun at mash temp for 90 minutes? Will I need to add some water at some point? I think I remember seeing someone who mashed for 60 minutes and lost 1 deg.

Click to expand...

There are pictures of what a good crush looks like all over this forum. You can also take a picture of your crush and post to this thread for evaluation.

Keeping your mash tun at temperature will vary depending on the ambient temperature outside. When it's hot, mine will only lose 1-2 degrees in an hour. When it's colder, it loses more, so I wrap it in a blanket to help compensate.

Yeah, I've seen a few of the pictures but it's hard for me to tell. I'll try and post a picture tonight for some experienced eyes. It's going to be pretty cold this weekend so I might try do the mashing inside. I feel like trying to maintain that temp by several additions of water could end up going awry.

Thanks for all the help by the way. I've been trying to read as much as I can, but have been too busy this week to do a lot of extra searching.

Here's the crush. This handful came from the top. Some of it may have settled in transit.

That crush looks pretty good to me.

Awesome. I'm about t minus 12 hours right now til the burner gets fired up. I can't wait.

Got an update? How did it go?

Mash went great. Except I did forget to add my flaked wheat. Threw it in before sparge, which was probably pointless. Almost ran out of propane, but the neighbor had a full bottle. And made quite the mess transferring to carboy. Probably lost close to a gallon of wort during the admittedly half drunken transfer. (installing kettle valve before next brew day) Although my efficiency was only around 60% according to beersmith, I was only .001 away from the recipe's OG expectation. Currently fermenting happily. I made my first yeast starter for this batch as well and it seemed to work well. Had signs of fermentation within a few hours. Overall, I'm very pleased with everything. Learned a few lessons on brew day that I can apply to my next attempt. Currently looking for the next recipe now.

Better to learn many lessons at once I suppose! As long as that flaked wheat hit hot water, you got something out of it, if only a touch of body. I'm not sure how you got it into the carboy, but before I had a kettle with a valve, I just used an auto-siphon to get it into the carboy.

You can usually gain some efficiency by heating your sparge water past 170. Maybe try 180 F next time and see if that helps.

I have no input but had to chime in to say that BigRedHopHead's avatar is hilarious, which just shows how much of a nerd I am.

I too learned several things during my first AG brew.
Just finished my 3rd brew day about 2 weeks ago. Still finding things to tweak.

Yeah, I like the learning process. I did the old fashion pour. Should work fine into a bucket. But really need a better funnel if I'm going to do it that way again. Regardless, I made beer and so far it smells amazing.

Mutt98 said:

Yeah, I like the learning process. I did the old fashion pour. Should work fine into a bucket. But really need a better funnel if I'm going to do it that way again. Regardless, I made beer and so far it smells amazing.

Click to expand...

Go to Home Depot and buy one of the paint strainer bags. Put it in the bucket/fermenter then pour the wort through the bag. Works great as a filter. Although I have to use a bungee cord around the bucket to keep the bag from falling in.

KeystoneHomebrew said:

Better to learn many lessons at once I suppose! As long as that flaked wheat hit hot water, you got something out of it, if only a touch of body. I'm not sure how you got it into the carboy, but before I had a kettle with a valve, I just used an auto-siphon to get it into the carboy.

You can usually gain some efficiency by heating your sparge water past 170. Maybe try 180 F next time and see if that helps.

Click to expand...

This is interesting...... I thought you wanted to keep the sparge temp below 170 in order to avoid extracting tannins from the grain? If this is not true, I'll try hotter sparge water to compensate for my low efficiency rates

arborman said:

This is interesting...... I thought you wanted to keep the sparge temp below 170 in order to avoid extracting tannins from the grain? If this is not true, I'll try hotter sparge water to compensate for my low efficiency rates

Click to expand...

I wondered this exact thing once or twice, so I am interested in the more knowledgable answer.
If I had to make a SWAG, I would say that the addition of water above 170 added to the grains would not be for a long enough time for tannin extraction.

Good points. It's my understanding, and experience, that tannin extraction is more a factor of ph. In a decoction mashing the grains are boiled, so temperature alone doesn't explain tannin extraction.

Another update. Had my first taste from bottle last night. Absolutely amazing after only 4 days in bottle. I never tried making this type of beer as an extract, so it's not a good comparison; but it blows the doors off all of my extract brews. Now I'm even more upset that I lost some on brew day.