y2jrock60
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- Joined
- Jul 6, 2009
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I brewed my first batch of beer last week after a two year hiatus. My buddy and I finally invested into some new equipment. The brewing kit we purchased advertised that it came with a thermometer on the box, it turned out to be a sticker style thermometer for the fermenter. It was late at night so the only place that was open was a small grocery store down the street where we picked up a cheap meat thermometer. It did the job, we were able to take accurate temperature readings, but it took forever for the needle to rise and it was pain holding a small thermometer in the mash and strike water for extended periods of times. Before we made a second batched we picked up a digital thermometer with a probe. It seemed to work really well and gave us fast and accurate measurements of our strike water with ease. However, when we dumped our strike water into our mash tun and added grain the thermometer went hay wire. I understand that different parts of the mash tun may be off by a degree or two, but we were getting readings with over 10 degrees of difference. We ended up adding a little hot water because we thought we were too low, then we a small amount of cool water because we thought we were too hot. We were unable to get a consistent reading after about 5 minutes. That's when we decided to say screw it and shut the mash tun and left it where is was. We used the same thermometer to heat up our sparge water to 168 degrees without a problem. For some reason it refused to work in the mash.
Does anyone know what is going on with our thermometer? I would like to get accurate mash measurements because I like experimenting with the effects of different temperatures. I wanted to mash at 155 to obtain a thicker sweeter beer, but I have no idea what my mash temperature was after all the failed adjustments. Our OG with dead on the mark, so I know we extracted enough sugars, but I'm not sure at what temperature. I should have probably just added my strike water at the suggested temperature and put the thermometer aside. Our first batch was within one degree of our predicted temperature. It kind of irritates me though that I can't get a good reading with an expensive thermometer.
Does anyone have any suggestions or similar experiences?
Does anyone know what is going on with our thermometer? I would like to get accurate mash measurements because I like experimenting with the effects of different temperatures. I wanted to mash at 155 to obtain a thicker sweeter beer, but I have no idea what my mash temperature was after all the failed adjustments. Our OG with dead on the mark, so I know we extracted enough sugars, but I'm not sure at what temperature. I should have probably just added my strike water at the suggested temperature and put the thermometer aside. Our first batch was within one degree of our predicted temperature. It kind of irritates me though that I can't get a good reading with an expensive thermometer.
Does anyone have any suggestions or similar experiences?