Davidio
Lookin' For The Good Stuff!
I use 180 degree water for a couple reasons.
1) It helps attract those sugar molecules from the grain. Remember, sparging is an osmotic procedure. You are not "rinsing" the sugar, you are coaxing the maltose to move from a higher concentration liquid to a lower one. and the hot water assists. If you use water in the 150-170 range, you may be leaving valuable sugars behind and thus to get them all you have an unmanageable volume of wort to boil down.
2) The risk of leaching tannins or fatty acids is perhaps higher by a small amount, but by the time that water makes its way into the mash, the temp will drop. Thusly, that argument does not hold water. Unless you are using a RIMS system, I wouldn't worry about that.
You definitely don't want you mash temp to drop below 150.
1) It helps attract those sugar molecules from the grain. Remember, sparging is an osmotic procedure. You are not "rinsing" the sugar, you are coaxing the maltose to move from a higher concentration liquid to a lower one. and the hot water assists. If you use water in the 150-170 range, you may be leaving valuable sugars behind and thus to get them all you have an unmanageable volume of wort to boil down.
2) The risk of leaching tannins or fatty acids is perhaps higher by a small amount, but by the time that water makes its way into the mash, the temp will drop. Thusly, that argument does not hold water. Unless you are using a RIMS system, I wouldn't worry about that.
You definitely don't want you mash temp to drop below 150.