Should I have more faith in Beersmith?

I was brewing this weekend. Beersmith tells me to heat my mash in water to 168*. I do that, put it in my pre-heated mash tun, and add my grains. I take a temp. and it is about 159*. I get worried and add a little cold water to bring it down... then I brought it down too far. Then I added some hot water to bring it back up. It only ever makes it to about 152* - 153*, lower than i wanted but probably fine.

Should I have just left it after the initial water addition? Think the temp would have sunk down to 154*?

after you add your water and mix thoroughly, that's your mash temp. It wouldn't have dropped from 159 to 154 in (I'm assuming) your cooler mash tun. It sounds like you need to configure your setup in beersmith. Beersmith always nails my temps. The key is to make sure you're entering, after actually measuring, your grain temp and Mash tun temp before adding the water.

It sounds like you panicked a little when you missed your temp? I would've left the initial strike result and tried to figure out why I came in high. The reason I would've left it is you should still mash ok in the high 150's and in my experience the more I tinker with things that go wrong the worse they get. Was the strike temperature taking in to account the mash tun?

I would say have more faith in yourself not the tool. Remember it's just a tool and you have to learn how to use it for your conditions. Not everyone who uses a hammer swings it the same way.

I'm sure its my setup in Beersmith... can't seem to get it all right. I think I still have trouble with some of the terminology or the measurements. Frustrating.

You were right about me panicking.


Any thoughts on how to adjust? Where I should be looking?

IrregularPulse said:

The key is to make sure you're entering, after actually measuring, your grain temp and Mash tun temp before adding the water.

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I'm not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate? I preheat my tun... maybe I shouldn't b/c beersmith accounts for a cold tun???

Old_E said:

I'm sure its my setup in Beersmith... can't seem to get it all right. I think I still have trouble with some of the terminology or the measurements. Frustrating.

You were right about me panicking.


Any thoughts on how to adjust? Where I should be looking?

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A couple of thoughts I have- one, it takes a few minutes for the temperature to equalize. That means, I stir, stir, stir. Check the temperature in several different places, and if it's different (it usually is), I stir, stir, stir again. By then it's about the same temperature throughout. That takes just a couple of minutes, so I cover it and let it sit just a couple more minutes and check it again. If you preheated the cooler, with 168 degree water I would expect a mash temp of 157-158 with room temperature grains so you didn't really miss it by much at 159! I bet if you stirred it for a few more minutes (and kept the lid off) it would have been 155 in just a few minutes.

What often happens is adding some cold water lowers it too much, and then more hot, etc. What I've found that adding like two-four ice cubes to drop just a degree or two and stirring well works.

Old_E said:

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate? I preheat my tun... maybe I shouldn't b/c beersmith accounts for a cold tun???

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There's a setting for the temperature of the grains and the MLT, BUT I always preheat anyway and get it perfect.

Another way to preheat is to add your strike water much hotter- at 175 degrees or so. Cover it, and let it drop to your strike temperature. That seems like it works really well for me.

pre-heating takes a lot of the guess work out of the process. What do you use for a tun?

Thanks Yooper, and everyone else. Again, sounds like I panicked an jumped the gun. I was thinking that I should have just waited and stirred, uncovered. The addition of the cold water was a bad idea, in retrospect. I think I had read something about someone adding a little cold water when their temp was too high, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.


BTW - I don't know what my tun temp is set at, off hand.


Off to start a thread on my other (and seemingly bigger) problem

jerryodom said:

pre-heating takes a lot of the guess work out of the process. What do you use for a tun?

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10 gallon rubbermaid cooler. I alway try to pre-heat. maybe I need to pour the pre-heat water in there, take a temp and plug it in???

Yooper said:

Another way to preheat is to add your strike water much hotter- at 175 degrees or so. Cover it, and let it drop to your strike temperature. That seems like it works really well for me.

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This is what I do. I enter my grain temp under the "Details" button in my Mash Setup. Then add strike water a bit hot to preheat my mash tun and dough in when it's reached the strike water temp BS indicates. IE, I wanted to Mash at 150 yesterday, Beersmith told me to mash in at 162(161.7). I was running the smoker at the same time and my water got away from me, I added 180° water (just because that's how hot it was when I got back to paying attention) and let it drop to 162, then doughed in. Then like Yooper said, stirred a bunch, checked several spots and stirred a bunch more when it wasn't consistent. Then I had 150-151 in 4 different spots and was satisfied.

IrregularPulse said:

This is what I do. I enter my grain temp under the "Details" button in my Mash Setup. Then add strike water a bit hot to preheat my mash tun and dough in when it's reached the strike water temp BS indicates. IE, I wanted to Mash at 150 yesterday, Beersmith told me to mash in at 162(161.7). I was running the smoker at the same time and my water got away from me, I added 180° water (just because that's how hot it was when I got back to paying attention) and let it drop to 162, then doughed in. Then like Yooper said, stirred a bunch, checked several spots and stirred a bunch more when it wasn't consistent. Then I had 150-151 in 4 different spots and was satisfied.

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Ok! That makes sense... i.e. I get it now. Sounds like you can't go wrong that way. Thanks!

I just have my grain temp set at about 72* ... room temp.

Just wanted to second this. I did my 1st all-grain with my new setup. Also
1st time using BS for a brew. BS said to heat strike h2o to 166. I had most of my h2o in the tun at 155. I kept removing heating and adding till I got to 166. I doughed in and mixed. After covering and waiting about 20 secs it was 148, WTF I needed 154. I was getting ready to pour in some boiling
h2o to raise the temp. Fortunatly I decided to mix a bit more and wait longer. 2 mins later I was about 155. GREAT. I love beer smith. I am loading a bunch of recipes from HB books so I can brew and tweek them. I'm sure I could expect more of a temp drop if the tun was not perheated. Like posted above, next time I will overshoot my strike temp a few degrees, let it cool then dough in.