In the middle of first ag, need advice!

so i heated up my strike water to about 172/169 thinking i would be good for hitting a temp of 154. the reason i say 172/169 was cause i am using 2 thermo's to get temps. i dumped the water into my mash tun, stirred the grains, took a temp and it was 149/145. out of panic, i slamed the lid shut on my cooler, quickly heated up about 5 cups of water to 172 within about 5 minuets and dumped it in without taking a temp. am i screwed? i was going to go about my procedure as usual until i collected all my runnings and do an iodophor test to check conversion. if it didnt convert, do i have any other options except starting over with buyin new grain?

if it's too low you can run some of the liquor off and bring it close to a boil and add it back. I don't like adding more water to a mash. You'll get conversion at 149F.

make sure to take note of how much temp you actually lost. it will come in handy for every single brew day after this one. I know I lose 15 degrees no matter what.

chefchris said:

if it's too low you can run some of the liquor off and bring it close to a boil and add it back. I don't like adding more water to a mash. You'll get conversion at 149F.

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at what point should i run it off and add it back? how much? and how long should i let it sit?

5 cups of 172 water won't adjust it much. remember its like 3-4 gallons of 145F water right now, so even 40 oz isn't much heat.

this is where having even the free version of something like ProMash helps as you can use the Step Mash calculator to determine how much boiling water would raise 145F to 152F.


Also as a tip, pre-heat your mash tun if its made out of a drink cooler. hot tap water is 122F from my faucet and I put 3 gallons in the cooler for 30 minutes beforehand.

I can then use that water for sparge (to avoid water waste) when I actually dough-in.

having said all this, a slightly low mash temp just means a drier beer, lower FG. You were pretty close so it really should ruin nothing. Just keep in mind that if its a little dry, that was the mash temp and not the recipe as intended.

you may love the final product though, so keep notes either way!

Here's what I do: Heat the strike water to 180F, dump it into the mash tun, put the lid on, leave it for 5 minutes, then open it and stir it and take a temperature reading. Then wait until it settles down to the desired strike temp, and only then add the grain. For me, it makes the whole process easier and almost foolproof.

zodiak3000 said:

at what point should i run it off and add it back? how much? and how long should i let it sit?

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sorry for the late reply. i usually run off a couple gallons and throw the flames full blast. It all depends on how much you run off if you're trying to figure out what to bring the temp up to. If it was just a little bit, I would bring it just under a boil. If it was a lot I would make it about 10 degrees or so hotter than my mash temp.

crazy, i checked my temp after the hour and it went up to 152-153? coversion was solid and efficiency was damn close to what expected. i think my first AG went ok. thanks for the feedback for future mashing issues...