Did i mess up my first mini mash?!?!

[Bigbens6]

So i went with this method: Menu In Progress: Partial Mash Brewing and an IPA Recipe Modeled After Blind Pig

I put in 165 degree water, it settled to 153 ish but by the end it was 148ish, is that too cold? I has 2.5lb of grain (Real MINI mash) and used 3 liters of water, then i rinsed with hot tap water....

1: Did i mash too cold

2: Didi i rinse too cold

3: Explain the iodine test to me, is it important that i do this?

Any other advice welcome!

 

[Yooper]

A mash of 153 sounds fine. I'm surprised it dropped that much- what did you mash in? If you mash in a pot, you can just add heat. If it's in a cooler, if you preheat it, that should help. I made my first few PMs in my bottling bucket, wrapped in a sleeping bag. Over 45 minutes, it only dropped about 4 degrees. Still, even though you dropped to 148, that's still going to give you fermentable sugars out of the mash, so don't worry!

Rinsing, or sparging, with hot tap water probably wasn't the best idea. If you heat up some water to 170-175, you can use that water to pour over the grain bed. You didn't hurt the mash at all, but water hotter than tap water will give you better results.

Iodine testing is to check to see if conversion took place. I don't always do it any more, but it's helpful if you're unsure if conversion is finished. You just take out a bit of the liquid from the mash tun. Put it on a white saucer, and add a drop or two of iodine. I use a toothpick to dip into the iodine and then "rub" that onto the wort. If there is starch, it'll turn black. Make sure no grains are in the sample. If there is no starch (fully converted), it'll stay orange. I use the toothpick to move it around a bit, to stir up the iodine/wort just to see if it's indeed converted.

 

[Bigbens6]

wont 175 net me some tannens? Or is it too litte too fast to worry about, thanks for the post it makes me feel a lil better, and it was only 2lbs base malt

 

[ChshreCat]

If you mash in a pot, heat your oven up to the 150's and stick your pot in there. I usually turn then heat on for a minute about halfway thorough and my mash stays right on for the whole hour.

 

[Yooper]

wont 175 net me some tannens? Or is it too litte too fast to worry about, thanks for the post it makes me feel a lil better, and it was only 2lbs base malt

Well, it's the grainbed temp you don't want to get over about 170, not the water temp. So, if the grainbed is around 150, 175 degree water won't even raise the temp of the grainbed much. You can probably go as high as 185 or so, if you monitor the temperature of the grainbed. I said 175 degrees, because that is definitely "safe" without worrying about it. When I do an AG batch and do a mashout, the water I add is nearly boiling to bring my grainbed to 168 degrees.

 

[Brocster]

I have done 7 beers now with the partial mash technique and have seen great improvements in the beer I have brewed. I have a 5 gallon pot for the boil, and a 3 gallon pot for the mash. Here are some things I do:

Use as much grain as I can with my equipement. For my beers, this usually means 6 to 6.5 pounds of grain and 3 to 4 pounds of DME. I use 1.25 qts per pound for my mash. I preheat my oven to 170, then turn off right before I place my mash into the oven. I usually mash for 75 minutes. I typically lose no more than 1 degree this way. I use my bottling bucket for sparge water, usually about 3 gallons. I heat the sparge water to 172, then dump in the bottling bucket. The heat absorbtion and air drops the heat about 2 degrees, which is perfect. I place the grains in a pasta strainer, recirculate the first runnings over the grains to get rid of husks, then sparge into the pot with the bottling spigot about 2/3rds open. Having the spigot half way open on my counter causes a spray pattern into the grains which are suspened with the handles of the strainer on two chairs, with the pot below it. I use a pyrex measurer (sanitized of course) to gently poor some water over the grains around the edges of the strainer a few times to prevent channling. I begin my boil without the DME, and usually add the DME at the 45 minute mark (I usually boil for 90 minutes). This allows me to begin the boil with the most water possible for my setup.

All told, I usally hit my target gravity dead on.