Mash under temp

[Oventoasted]

So, i got my strike water up to 165f and when i transferred it to my mash tun it was already at 158f. After adding my grist i checked the temp one last time before putting on the lid and got a temp of 138f.

Now the recipe im following says i need to mash it at 154f. Am i screwed or is there anyway to fix this?

hope i didnt ruin it all right at the start, haha.

 

[jdub1782]

If you have enough room in your mash tun you can add enough boiling water to get up to temp. Or you can pull a gallon or so of wort out of your mash tun, heat it up and return to the mash tun

 

[feinbera]

You're gonna need to get it up to at least 150 or so to get starch conversion.

Either of jdub's suggestions will work, but adding boiling water is better if you've got the room – boiling part of your mash will make your beer darker and more caramely, and will cook some of your enzymes to death, which both can be fine if they're part of your plan (this is called a decoction), but will probably just make trouble if you're doing it on the fly. This calculator (scroll down to the "rest calculator") will tell you how much water you need to get from your current temp/volume/weight in grain to the temp you want to hit.

Or, if your mash tun is a stainless kettle rather than a plastic cooler, you can just throw that sucker on the stove, you'd have a hard time boiling it, but raising it a few degrees won't be an issue at all.

 

[Oventoasted]

damn... i added some near boiling water only about .5 gal because i couldnt wait longer to get more to boil. got the temp up to only 142f.

should i just scrap it and start over another day or do you think i will have enough sugars to actually get anything out of this?



also now that i need to mashout i couldn't even get it up to 170f only 155f. lesson learned for next time is get my water a lot hotter. there seems to be some sort of black hole between my propane burner and the mash tub sucking all the heat.

 

[theseeker4]

damn... i added some near boiling water only about .5 gal because i couldnt wait longer to get more to boil. got the temp up to only 142f.

should i just scrap it and start over another day or do you think i will have enough sugars to actually get anything out of this?



also now that i need to mashout i couldn't even get it up to 170f only 155f. lesson learned for next time is get my water a lot hotter. there seems to be some sort of black hole between my propane burner and the mash tub sucking all the heat.

Did you pre heat the mash tun? A lot of the time,that can be a big heat sink that you have to either pre heat, or compensate for.

 

[Oventoasted]

so, after doing some reading in my "how to brew" book i noticed that the recipe i was using didnt have a good water to grist ratio (1.5/2 quarts per lbs).

http://www.malt.io/users/jayrbaker/recipes/byo-shiner-bock-clone-2-0

after adding up the weight 12.5625 lbs i should have had 4.7-6.2 gallons.

definitely going to do my own math from now on and not just blindly follow a recipe.