Messed up Mash

I brewed a batch last night and had some problems that I should have avoided but didn't.

I use a cooler as a mashtun. I added my strike water 10 degrees hotter than beersmith calculated and let it drop down to the desired dough in temp as I always do. This method that I learned here on HBT works great for me. I added my grain, started my hour timer, stirred and took my temp, 155, so I stirred for about 5 minutes and got down to 154 where I wanted to be. I closed the cooler and left the therm probe in the cooler as I normally do to monitor temp.

I went to clean my carboys. After 15 minutes passed I went to check and the temp was up to 162? Whats going on here? So I panicked and added some cold water to bring it down to 154 again, 5 mins later is back up to 168!!!! So FINALLY I realize that this is impossible and did what I shoudl have done in the first place. I got my back up thermometer, and sure enough my original one had gone haywire. Actual mash temp was now down to 146.

So, this is an IPA I wanted to mash at 154 for 60 minutes. I am pretty confident that I mashed at 154ish for about 20 minutes before I stupidly added the cold water and dropped the temp into the 145-146 range.

How dry do you think this batch will turn out??

Thanks in advance.

Alan

What was your OG and what yeast did you pitch and did you use a starter?

I would bet that most of the conversion happened by 20 minutes, with a temp of 154. I've had more than one mash show complete conversion by 20 minutes, when mashed in the mid 150s.

I wouldn't worry about it at all. The only thing you may notice, if anything at all, is that it may finish a bit drier than you intended and may have a bit thinner body to the final beer. All in all, probably good things in an IPA anyway!

OG was measured at 1.056, just shy of estimated 1.057. Yeast is CA Ale, yes starter, put in carboys last night around 10:00PM, active fermentation by 7:00 AM.

Thanks Yooper .

Alan

I did a similar mash at 152 for about 15 minutes and the 146 for 45. My OG was 1.060, wyeast 3944 with starter and it finished at 1.005. It was still a great beer!