Best way to preheat a keggle mash tun?

Just wondering what some of the methods are?

A propane burner, lots of stirring, and a steady eye on your thermometer.

Why would you preheat? Calculate your strike water temp, heat the water in the keggle to that temp, and add your grain.

I add a little boiling water and dump it right before I add my strike water.

I have found that heating the strike water to about 200 degrees is necessary before adding that to the mash tun. I heat my water in a keggle prior to transferring it to the mash tun because I dont have a burner under my mash tun. Doing it that way, I seem to lose about 30 degrees just in the transfer of water from the first keggle to the mash tun. Then, adding the grains makes me lose another 15 or so degrees, so I end up around 155 degrees for the mash.

Not sure why Beersmith tells me to prepare 163.5 degree water thinking that adding the grains will drop it to the proper mash temp? I need 200 degrees, not 163.5. Beersmith is way off it seems.

dmbnpj said:

Not sure why Beersmith tells me to prepare 163.5 degree water thinking that adding the grains will drop it to the proper mash temp? I need 200 degrees, not 163.5. Beersmith is way off it seems.

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Are you entering the grain temp into Beersmith? If you're refrigerating your grains and Beersmith is assuming room temp, that'll make a huge difference.

Not sure what its set at, but if it defaults to room temp. then I should have been right on for my grains are room temp.

Good point though. Wondering what else could factor it?

Does beersmith know the makeup of your mash tun? If not, how would it know what temp it needs. I calibrated beertoolspro with the data from my keg based tun and it tells me the correct temperature whether I set the strike heating vessel to the MLT (I have a burner under there) or if it's in the HLT. When I heat in the MLT, it usually tells me to go to about 163f. When I tell it that I'm mashing in the MLT, but heating strike in the HLT, it tells me something like 193F but it's dependent on what you set at ambient temp.

That must be my problem. I thought I selected everything in beersmith to correspond with my setup. I use 3 converted kegs, keggles, in my setup. I selected the 15 gallon brewing system in beersmith which when you click on "details" it shows the mash tun material as stainless steel which I am assuming that they are talking about the keggles. I do heat my strike in the HLT but mash in a separate MLT.

Is beertoolspro a different program? Because I dont see the option in beersmith to choose between heating in the HLT or MLT?