Everything there is to know about Mashing

I have so many questions about all the things i am doing, trying to refine my process so I can help others with learning this great craft.

I love Beer Smith for loggin recipes and ccalculating final gravity but it doesnt provide acurate strike water temps, through trial and error I have figured that I can fit 7.25 Gallons of water and 25 lbs of crushed grains into my 10 gallon Rubbermaid water cooler and thhat if I heat the water to 161 I can get 152 to 155 (the cooler just doesnt let go of heat) If I use beer smith I always go over, my question is this,
In how many seconds/minutes do the the beta amalayse enzymes die and is the cutoff point 150? or higher, i have seen literature saying as high as 155.

second question, is doughing in at 100- 120 degrees goingto make my beer better and if so what is the perfect temperature for that.

I have also read that a tight mash is better than a loose one for enzyme conversion. Someone told me once it should be like thick oatmeal, lately i have been making really thin mashes (25 lbs + 7 gallons of water)

how hot is too hot for sparge water?

I am asking all these questions because i trust the people on Homebrew talk more than the books on this subjesct, I havent found any brew books that mention some of the really great info that i have found on this site. (No secondary? who would have gueseed.

_thank you
Jeremy

also what happens if i strike too hot, the temps at 158 and i quickly cool it down ( less than a minute) and now its 147, what should i do

have i killed all the beta amalayse as well as made the temp too cold for alpha amalayse conversion.

thanks again

I have been dead on with strike temps using Beer Smith.
Why not work back the specific heat of your system and plug it back into beer smith rather than using the default specific heat value.

You know you can tweak beersmith to match your system? Giligson describes what you need to do. There are many things in beersmith that you can set values for if you look for them.

siso80 said:

I am asking all these questions because i trust the people on Homebrew talk more than the books on this subjesct,

_thank you
Jeremy

Click to expand...

So how do you think most of the people on the forums who answer your questions gain their knowledge? Don't substitute asking unresearched questions on the internet for quality published knowledge. There are no secrets about beer making, all the information is available. Buy a book, a good up-to-date publication like Palmer's "How to Brew". Then read it. All of the basic info like mash and sparge temperatures is there. Establishing a simple foundation of understanding in the concepts & techniques of brewing will greatly improve your skills IMO.

Re sparge water the standard temperature is ~170F. However, lots of brewing questions do not have simple, straightforward answers and without gaining a Brewing 101 level of understanding of the process multiple answers can be more confusing than helpful.

Beer Smith has always been right on, if you're dropping temp that quick - are you preheating your mash tun? Beer Smith doesn't calculate for preheating, I usually heat to about 10 degrees hotter than my strike temp, and then mash-in at the strike temp. Then the temps don't waiver at all...

Even if your mash is at 160 for 10 minutes while your stiring in ice to get it to 148 the enzymes still will work.