gouge in my mash tun

So I finally made the jump to all grain, went with a 10 gallon igloo setup. However, I noticed when I was cleaning it that there is about an 8 inch gouge in the plastic wall. Its not very deep, but doesn't take much to hide baddies. I know how bad that can be for fermenting, and went all glass/stainless for that, but since the mash temp seems to be right around the 160 mark I'm a little worried. I know obviously I want to mash around 165, but since its not direct heat its tough to fix if it sits around 158 or something. I emailed the company, though I realized I'm sure they are going to tell me its fine. Does anyone have any experience with this? Am I ok to use it or should I be worried?
Thanks, Brad

if baddies are hiding there they will not like the fact you will be boiling your wort for an hour or more

I would think

all the best

S_M

Mash tun won't matter...now if it were in your fermenter it would matter.

Why are you mashing around "165"... I must be reading that wrong....

Jmarsh544 said:

Why are you mashing around "165"... I must be reading that wrong....

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no that is how I read it

I know obviously I want to mash around 165, but since its not direct heat its tough to fix if it sits around 158

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all the best

S_M

Thanks for the replies. Beersmith was telling me 164.1 degrees, am I getting lied to? And I do understand the boil will kill anything, but that doesn't mean it wont effect the flavor, which was my concern (which I see I didn't completely state clearly)

If beersmith telling you to add water to your tun at around 165, that may be correct to account for the temp. that the tun will pull out of the water. You want your actual mash temp between 148 and 158 for most beers, obviously depending on style. From everything I have read and personally experienced, nothing in the tun is going to impact your beer profile over the course of an hour mash. You should be just fine!

Yeah 165 should be the temperature you add the water at (since I live in a colder climate, I usually start with my water at 168).

When you add the grain the mixture of water and grain should be ~150-158 depending on style. My default preference is 152 unless I'm trying to match a certain style out of that range.

If your mash mixture is sitting at 164, you run the risk of denaturing a lot of the enzyme needed to make your wort fermentable.

As others have said, add your water at the ~164 temp so that it ends up at ~148-158 (depending on specific conversion goals) after adding grain and stirring it up.

Your mash is very very very unsanitary to start with. The grain you use is full of lactobacillus, rodent 'leavings,' weevil larva, and a whole bunch of other stuff that it picks up by sitting around in large-scale grain storage for a while before you finally get a hold of it. None of this is particularly bad, nor will it hurt you in the amounts present in the grain. Most everything is taken care of in the boil so life is good.

All of this being said, if the company shipped you a damaged product then nothing wrong with getting a new one in my opinion. As long as you keep it clean (visually clean at least) then you shouldn't have any problems though.

Edit: all of the bacteria/wild yeast in the grain is the reason why your mash will start to noticeably sour if left out for longer than a few hours. As long as you're only mashing for 60-90 minutes though, no problems.

Agree with everything above.

I, personally, didn't need to read about all this crap in my grain. YUCK! Thanks for that.......

jro238 said:

The grain you use is full of lactobacillus, rodent 'leavings,' weevil larva, and a whole bunch of other stuff that it picks up by sitting around in large-scale grain storage for a while before you finally get a hold of it.

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