Last minute mash help please

[Evan_L]

I wanted to post about how well it went but I guess that's not in the cards. Got Fukt by my thermometer.

Calibrated my electronic grill thermo against my standard floaty one while doing a test boil (passivise new pot) before heating mash water. Both read the same, figured it was good to go. Left the floaty in the sparge water heating while I mashed in. Got 154 with the electronic thermo and sealed it up.

Took sparge water inside and checked temp real quick before I sparged... electronic one says 200* (floaty read 172*), shoot, then says air temp is 136* definitely something went wrong with it. Checked mash with the floaty and was mashing at like 120 the whole time.

I'm shooting for a 1.067 post boil gravity. lautered and ran a few gallons through. first quart read 1.050. Can I re-mash? How about raising temp back up to 154 and letting it sit for another 30 min? Any drawbacks to this?

 

[Token]

Well, if you're shooting for a POST boil gravity of 1.067 and have a PRE boil of 1.050, I guess you're not that far off. I suppose you could raise the temp back up and let is go for another 30. Kinda like a protein rest.

Better hold off for more intelligent answers.

 

[Evan_L]

Yeah, IDK about close, That was just the first little bit I drew out, end of sparge i'm sure would be much much lower. Just dumped a 1/2 G of boiling water in, hope that raises it enough, going to let it sit for 30 min.

So, I know that lower temps, 150-154, give a more fermentable wort at the cost of some body versus 158+, what is the impact of 130-140 mashes? I know from my grav that there is some sugar in there...but what does mega-low do to it?

 

[stpug]

Below ~140 you will get minimal to no conversion (less the lower you go), at least in theory.

A long rest at 120 (protein rest) will reduce possible protein haze but also head retention. A short rest would help with protein haze and have minimal effect on head retention.

You definitely want to up your mash to your original mash temp, perhaps a degree or 2 higher to off-set the already very fermentable sugars that have been converted. I don't know if 1/2 gallon is enough to raise from 120 to 154. I'm guessing you're going to be needing around 2.5 gallons of boiling water to bring ~12 lbs of 1.25:1 ratio mash at 120 up to 154.

At this point, I wouldn't worry too much about types of sugars and body, and just aim to get my grain converted. Overall, as long as you get good conversion you'll get a beer, and probably a beer that's very close to what you were after.

 

[Evan_L]

Thanks! Hey is there an online calculator (or one in beersmith I haven't found) to figure an amount of X* water to raise or lower to a desired temp (or is the math just that simple lol).

Had no more room to add boiling water. At this point i've been at it for 5 hours, only have ~1.030 wort. Just gonna call it quits rather than spend the time, propane and hops on a 3% beer that will be more work from here out to boil, ferm, and bottle than it's worth to me.

Today was a lot of firsts, using the burner, mashing, milling, process etc... I wouldn't call it a failure, just practice lol, gotta find a bright side somehow. At least AHS has free shipping today, time to replace the grains and start again. Next time should go a lot smoother, and I know what not to do!

 

[stpug]

That's a bummer but I can understand calling it quits after 5 hours of just mashing. You could always boil down your wort to a smaller batch size to get a bigger beer, or substitute in some malt extract to bring up the gravity. Then again, I won't fault you for quiting at this late in the game

Yeah, green bay rackers has a nice calculator to determine step infusion amounts:

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

 

[Evan_L]

Thanks for the link!