Mash time

Hi,

There is something I don't understand about mashing.

If I mash for 1 hour, then recirculate, then drain, the liquid is sitting with the grain for much longer than one hour but a lot of the guides etc that I have read say you need to mash for an hour.

On Sunday I mashed for one hour, recirculated for about 15 minutes then drained. Then I batch sparged for 10 minutes before recirculating again then it got stuck whilst draining so I had to stir and let it sit for another 10 minutes before recirculating once more and draining. The whole thing probably took more than two hours.

What effect would this have? Should you always aim to recirculate and drain within a certain time frame to avoid mashing for too long?

Many thanks.

This is why many people mash-out by adding near-boiling water to increase the temperature of the grist to around 170F prior to the first collection. This halts the starch conversion. And I typically recirculate (vorlauf) for just a few minutes until the wort is clear. But it's pretty specific to your system. Also, mashing longer (say around 90 mins) is also typical, particularly in beers that you want to dry out (high attenuation) like IIPAs. Of course, you combine this with a lower mash temp (e.g. 148F). To answer your question, I don't think the longer time will affect you much.

+1 to above post.

No need to worry. When people say mash for an hour, they just mean that you should let the beer sit for an hour at 1 temp. This doesn't include recirculating and sparging.

The extra time in the mash will only increase your efficiency.