How bad did I screw up?

[Lazarusnz]

Hi everyone. Last night I brewed my fourth BIAB batch - a best bitter. Unfortunately I missed my mash temp quite badly by not stirring properly and my mash was at 161 for about 5 minutes or so until I got some cold water in to get it to 155 (was aiming for 154). Will this short amount of time make it overly dextrinous or should I be OK? Cheers

 

[doug293cz]

Good chance it will be ok. Alpha amylase will create a highly fermentable wort given enough time. Most of your beta amylase was probably denatured before you got the temp down to 155. What were your intended and actual OG's?

Brew on

 

[Dirt_McGirt]

If it makes you feel any better I did the same thing, only worse this past weekend. Temp got up to 165-6 for probably close to 10 minutes because I tried to goose the temp with the stovetop, then got distracted by something else. Thankfully it was late in my mash, and my OG was still on target, so yours should be fine. My only other concern is tannin extraction, which you won't have to worry about.

 

[doug293cz]

If it makes you feel any better I did the same thing, only worse this past weekend. Temp got up to 165-6 for probably close to 10 minutes because I tried to goose the temp with the stovetop, then got distracted by something else. Thankfully it was late in my mash, and my OG was still on target, so yours should be fine. My only other concern is tannin extraction, which you won't have to worry about.

Sounds like OP's temp was high from the beginning of the mash, which is potentially much worse than getting high temps later in the mash. With high temp late, the beta amylase has already done most of what it was going to do, and a lot of it will have slowly denatured, if the initial temps are above the low 150's. With high temps early, the beta gets denatured much earlier than in a normal mash, and has little time to create much maltose.

If your mash pH was in a normal 5.3 - 5.7 range, you have no worries about getting tannin extraction due to the over heating.

Brew on

 

[Lazarusnz]

Thanks everyone feel a bit better for that - sort of! Target OG was 1.045 and I hit 1.046 so that's cool. I'm probably more concerned about fermentability of what I extracted. I guess I'll find out if my FG is higher than intended

 

[RM-MN]

Beta amylase does not denature instantly at the higher temperatures but slowly degrades while conversion happens more quickly with the higher temperature. With BIAB you can mill your grains really fine and that makes for a quick conversion but its pretty hard to tell how fine you milled the grains so nobody can tell how long the conversion took. I'd have to guess that your beer will be pretty good, maybe a little more body than you anticipated but still good.

 

[flhb]

It will probably be okay:

http://brulosophy.com/2015/10/12/the-mash-high-vs-low-temperature-exbeeriment-results/

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

I have done this before also, got the mash way to high early on accident. In my case...no it didn't turn out but...thats not always the case. Just roll the dice and keep brewing time will tel.

 

[Lazarusnz]

I kust use the standard crush from the shop nothing too fine as I'm happy with efficiency in the low 70s. Whatever happens I should get some sort of beer