How to attain temps?

[mzukovsky]

I'm a newer all grain brewer and recently found a recipe that has multiple rests at different temps in the recipe. I use two coolers converted into my mash tun/hlt. My question is, how can I easily change the temperature using this set up or is it not possible?


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[Yooper]

You can generally do step mashes in coolers, or a decoction mash.

Unless you're using undermodified malt, or a ton of adjuncts, step mashes are generally not recommended so maybe you could have someone check the recipe and make sure it should have a step mash, and that it's correct. Sometimes people have weird recipes that have meaningless step mashing, so it's always a good idea to check it over to make sure it would be a good idea.

 

[billl]

The general way to step mash in a cooler is to add boiling water to get you up to the next temp. Depending on the size of your cooler and the range of the steps, you might need to start with a pretty thick mash to make that practical.

As yooper noted, you should question why a particular mash schedule is being used. You can generally make great beer without multiple rests. If you are a new brewer, you might want to brew the recipe once with a single infusion mash. Then, try it again with a step mash. That would give you are idea of what (if any) benefits the extra time and effort might make.

 

[mzukovsky]

The recipe I'm looking at is a dogfish 90 clone and most all I have found have steps involved in mashing. The recipe states "mash in at 120 and raise to 149 until conversion is complete."


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[Yooper]

The recipe I'm looking at is a dogfish 90 clone and most all I have found have steps involved in mashing. The recipe states "mash in at 120 and raise to 149 until conversion is complete."


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Definitely do NOT do that with a DFH 90 minute clone, and especially not mashing in at 120. That recipe sounds very suspect, and I would not do that.

 

[billl]

I can think of no possible benefit to that given your setup. Just mash at 149 and you'll be fine. If you want to insure that it dries out well, you can let it go 90 minutes vs 60 minutes.