How often to stir mash?

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theck said:
I thought the discussion was about stirring thoughout the 60 min wait. I'm just wondering if there is any benefit to stirring after the 60 mins, so you open the lid, stir like crazy, vorlauf and drain. I stir when I add the grain to the water, and I stir after adding the adding the batch sparge water. Never mind, it's probably the same as fly {above} and not a bad thing to do before batch sparging.
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Oh, I see what you are asking! No, don't stir before vorlaufing and draining until you add the water. Then you stir.
 
stirring occasionally during the 60 minutes helps to extract more sugars .
Stirring before you sparge is going to mess up your grain bed and allow more crap to get in your wort or clog up your filter . How ever if you get a clogged filter or the grain bed is too dense for the water to drain through then stirring is good .
 
I usually stir when dough in and (if I remember) 30 minutes after.
I noticed that my efficiency get 3-4% up with this middle-mash-stir, this leads me to question what effect on efficiency would be with constant mash stirring.
 
diS said:
I usually stir when dough in and (if I remember) 30 minutes after.
I noticed that my efficiency get 3-4% up with this middle-mash-stir, this leads me to question what effect on efficiency would be with constant mash stirring.
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I typically get 85% mash efficiency and I try and stir every 15minutes throughout an hour mash. Not sure that settles it. As a matter of fact I know it won't plenty brewers on here will be more than happy to argue both sides of the coin. However in my experience as short as it may be. I notice an increase in mash efficiency when I stir as opposed to when I forget to.
 
I must agree with stirring all you want . I stir mine several times during the mash and although I have never calculated efficiency I do know that when I am done sparging the water is running clear . No sugars left to extract . the grain has no flavor left in it to speak of . Just like making tea from a bag you must stir it around to get out all the flavor , or bob it up and down as goes the tea bag .
 
Yooper said:
I thought we were talking about sparging here? When you add the sparge water when batch sparging, you stir like you mean it, and then stir some more. Then a little bit more. Then vorlauf and drain.

You always stir when you add something to the grain or to the mash. So when you add water to grain, or vice versa, stir like it owes you money. If you're not adding anything, you don't stir.
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See. Between Yooper here and others such as Revvy, there is no reason to spend 25 smackers on a book!
 
I had a strange thing happen. I brewed in colder than normal temps. As a result, my mash temp was low. My HERMS wasn't raising the temp fast enough, so I fired the burner under the keggle. I stirred quite a bit to prevent scorching. Twice my flow to my pump from the mash tun got cut off/plugged up. Twice I had to back feed water from my HLT through my copper manifold to clear it.

In all of my previous batches, I've never had this happen. So obviously it was caused by the stirring. I just don't know why.

Thoughts?
 
dan_rouse said:
I had a strange thing happen. I brewed in colder than normal temps. As a result, my mash temp was low. My HERMS wasn't raising the temp fast enough, so I fired the burner under the keggle. I stirred quite a bit to prevent scorching. Twice my flow to my pump from the mash tun got cut off/plugged up. Twice I had to back feed water from my HLT through my copper manifold to clear it.

In all of my previous batches, I've never had this happen. So obviously it was caused by the stirring. I just don't know why.

Thoughts?
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stirs up all that fine stuff and it sucks on through with the wort instead of being trapped in the layers of bigger stuff and clogs the filter .

I still like to stir at least once during my mash maybe twice . Just to wash out all the flavor from the grain .
 
On a sixty minute mash in stir once at 30 min then vorlauf & drain my first runnings into my BK & start heating on low. I then add my sparge water (batch) and stir briskly then wait ten minutes before vorlaufing again and add my sparge water to the BK & turn up the heat for boiling.
 
govner1 said:
On a sixty minute mash in stir once at 30 min then vorlauf & drain my first runnings into my BK & start heating on low. I then add my sparge water (batch) and stir briskly then wait ten minutes before vorlaufing again and add my sparge water to the BK & turn up the heat for boiling.
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I really don't lose that much heat in my tun so I'll have to try to stir it next time. I'm sure opening and stirring every 20 mins wouldn't cause much heat loss if you did it quickly?
 
craigger64 said:
Sometimes, to save time, I'll just scroll through a thread to find Yooper's or Revvy's response! :rockin:
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Are you serious? Guess what guys (excluding Yooper and Revvy, no offense) nobody else has a clue on how to brew beer. I'm gonna sell all my stuff any takers?
 

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