Mashed Way Too Hot - Help

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kzimmer0817

kzimmer0817

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My son was brewing a 10 gallon last night beer last night - one that was special to him. Apparently, his estimated strike temp did not consider that his grain was quite cold. In an effort to raise the mash temp in his cooler, he added way too much very hot water. The mash was around 185 for quite a while as he tried to add ice bottles, then the sparge stuck as we tried desperately to drain the cooler.

He figured that he had killed any enzymes necessary for mashing. After much frustration, he went ahead and boiled down what he had to about 5.5 gallons and put it into a sanitized no-chill container. His gravity was about 1.100.

The concern is that he has a concentrated 5 gallons of non-fermentable wort (if you can call it that).

Is there a way that this could be saved/salvaged?

1. adding exogenous enzymes to sort of perform the job that the natural enzymes would have done had they not been inadvertently denatured?

2. adding a certain amount of this concentrate to the mash of a "repeat batch" of this beer (using fresh grains) so that the enzymes in the fresh grain will also convert the more complex sugars in his concentrate?

Thanks,
Keith
 
Draw off a 1/2 gallon or so, add way-too-much yeast and see how it ferments. If it doesn't get very far, you could add some amylase enzyme, which you can get from most LHBS for about $2. I don't know how well it would convert at this point. Another option is Beano, although that would convert every last carbohydrate in the beer to fermentable sugar, which may not be much better than what you have. I suppose you could try something like the second option you listed above; adding all the wort at 150ish with a few pounds crushed base malt for an hour or so.
 
For the future, he might try what I do in case of missing mash temp. Instead of mashing with 1.5 qt/lb, I mash with 1.25 qt/lb. I put .25 qt/lb in the fridge to get cold and the same amount in a pot to boil. This means I can move my temps up or down quickly without making my mash too thin. It also limits how much of each I can add. I always add a small amount at a time, mix and then wait measure temp. If I add a bot too much hot, then I can add some cold to pull back down.
 
Hey Keith, did you point out that he wouldn't have had that problem if he was doing BIAB? :p
 
Mashing the grain at 185 presents more issues than just more unfermenting sugars. At over 172F you'll extract tannins from the grain. This could be a batch destined to be dumped. Before you bottle/keg it be sure to pull a taste sample. It would suck even more if you bottle it up only to find you cannot drink it.

Also, head slap him for messing up that badly. :D

BTW, I never have this issue in my direct fired mash tun keggle. :D
 
Golddiggie said:
Only a portion of it is boiled... This was the entire thing... Not saying it will be a dumper, but it's got at least a 50% chance of feeding the sewer rats (and gators)... :eek:
Click to expand...

Thanks for the responses thus far. He called our LHBS yesterday while I was at work. He was going to be receiving some amylase some time today.

Regarding the boiling: the grains didn't get boiled. My understanding is that tannins are released when the grain stays too hot (perhaps this hot?). We lifted the cooler/mashtun to straddle a large keg so we could try to drain it, and it stuck. We quickly lined the keggle with my BIAB bag and dipped the contents - grain and all - into the keggle/bag. The bag was then pulled leaving only the liquid. There was sufficient frustration in the air that I don't know how long all this took.

So, it was the product of an overheated dunk sparge that got boiled down.

I told him the throw the whole mess out and I would buy him the grains so we could try it again in a week or so.

Thanks,
Keith
 
Don't dump it. What temp was the initial temp? T,he temp that was too low. Did he do a starch test? Is the wort sweet? If so it converted some
 
kzimmer0817 said:
Regarding the boiling: the grains didn't get boiled. My understanding is that tannins are released when the grain stays too hot (perhaps this hot?).
Click to expand...

My point was that when you do a decoction mash, you boil part of the mash, including the grain. And there's no worries about tannins, they're only a concern if the pH gets above 5.4 or something. So I don't think you need to worry about tannins.
 
i had a mash (recirculating direct fire, the recirc got stuck and i didn't notice) get into the 190's for a few minutes, i carried on and the beer is fine.
 
thughes said:
Hey Keith, did you point out that he wouldn't have had that problem if he was doing BIAB? :p
Click to expand...

When he's in that mood, you just don't say things like that, hee hee. He had 20 lbs of grain. As he was lifting the bag you sent me (we had put it into the keggle and dipped the grain out of the mashtun into it) it got a couple 2" tears from the screws holding the handles onto the keggle. Then he asks, "how can BIAB be any easier than running it into the mashtun/cooler?"

BTW, my brew of Reno eNVy's Punkin Ale turned out pretty well. A friend who brews tried it the other day and said that it was very clean. You can't really taste the spice.

Keith
 
kzimmer0817 said:
When he's in that mood, you just don't say things like that, hee hee. He had 20 lbs of grain. As he was lifting the bag you sent me (we had put it into the keggle and dipped the grain out of the mashtun into it) it got a couple 2" tears from the screws holding the handles onto the keggle. Then he asks, "how can BIAB be any easier than running it into the mashtun/cooler?"

BTW, my brew of Reno eNVy's Punkin Ale turned out pretty well. A friend who brews tried it the other day and said that it was very clean. You can't really taste the spice.

Keith
Click to expand...

Hope you told him "Wouldn't have got a stuck sparge with BIAB". :p

Bummer about the tears, go grab a voile curtain at Wally World and cut/sew a few patches on it.

All moved in and started building that electric brewery I assume?
 
kzimmer0817 said:
My son was brewing a 10 gallon last night beer last night - one that was special to him. Apparently, his estimated strike temp did not consider that his grain was quite cold. In an effort to raise the mash temp in his cooler, he added way too much very hot water. The mash was around 185 for quite a while as he tried to add ice bottles, then the sparge stuck as we tried desperately to drain the cooler.

He figured that he had killed any enzymes necessary for mashing. After much frustration, he went ahead and boiled down what he had to about 5.5 gallons and put it into a sanitized no-chill container. His gravity was about 1.100.

The concern is that he has a concentrated 5 gallons of non-fermentable wort (if you can call it that).

Is there a way that this could be saved/salvaged?

1. adding exogenous enzymes to sort of perform the job that the natural enzymes would have done had they not been inadvertently denatured?

2. adding a certain amount of this concentrate to the mash of a "repeat batch" of this beer (using fresh grains) so that the enzymes in the fresh grain will also convert the more complex sugars in his concentrate?

Thanks,
Keith
Click to expand...

I can't help but call shenanigans on this one. Even if he added boiling water to the mash, at a volume equal to his original mash (i.e. he had a mash volume of 5 gallons, then added 5 gallons of boiling water), in order for his mash to wind up at 185F, it would have had to start out at 158F, which is nowhere near too cold..

(212+158)/2=185. Something just doesn't add up.

I can't imagine that his mash was so small, or his tun so big, that he could have doubled the amount of the mash(or more) by adding an equal amount of boiling water(or more), and still fit it all in the tun. Just my 2 cents.

Maybe I don't have all the facts.
 

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