Mash Out Was Too High

[Shay]

I was brewing a Scottish Ale yesterday. I must have had too much mash out water since my grain bed was at 180 degrees after I poured it in. Is this going to extract a bunch of tannins. I am hoping it is not. It was a 1.25 qt / lb ratio for the original mash.

 

[WBC]

I think you may have an error of sorts. It takes a lot of heat to raise up to 170 F from 150 F. You could have used Beersmith to get the volume to add at what temperature to get to 170 for mashout. If you play with the tools in Beersmith you will see how useful that is as it prevents mistakes. Chances are your beer will be OK anyway. I use 185F to sparge all the time without any trace of tannins.

 

[CharlosCarlies]

^^^

+1

It would take a couple gallons of boiling water to bring it up that high. Can you give us a little more detail of our technique?

 

[Shay]

I was mashing at 156 and added boiling water. I thought I had 1 1/2 gallons, but it must have been more. I am hoping that I did not extract tannins in doing so.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

I'm not too clear on exactly what happened here, but even if you extracted the dreaded tannins it will not taste nearly as nasty as you are probably thinking. You really do need to post more about what happened though

 

[Denny]

If your pH was in line, the water temp won't have too much effect.

 

[beerkrump]

+1 to denny...


pH is the real culprit. High temps help extract tannins, but you'll have no worries if your alkalinity is low, pH below 6, or so. If your water is neutral or alkaline, you can add 5.2 or other adjunct, use a thicker mash, or just make stouts.

 

[pjj2ba]

+1 again. After all, when pulling a decotion, you are boiling the grains. As long as your pH is fine, no problem

 

[Shay]

Thanks guys. I figured the ph would help prevent the tannin extraction. We will see, it is fermenting at 58 degrees now. I hope it turns out.