Mash too high

[mesthay]

So I'm brewing a batch of NEIPA and my wifes phone falls in a puddle of water. While I'm trying to dry her phone out I totally neglect my brew for like 5 minutes. Its a Brew-Boss system and the water level dropped below the temp probe and the mash got to 175 for about 5 minutes until I was able to get it back down to 152. Is my beer done? Does it matter that it was only at that temp for 5 minutes or less?

 

[SteveHeff]

I had a similar issue come up with a stout I brewed. This caused my beer to not completely ferment out, at least the yeast would not attenuate as well as they normally do. Taste wise, I don't think anything will be damaged.

The only thing that could potentially occur, as far as I know, is some tannin off flavors. I say brew it all the way through, ferment it, and then taste it. As long it doesn't taste terrible, bottle/keg it up.

 

[mesthay]

I'm gonna mash at 152 for an extra 30 minutes and see if my pre-boil OG comes up. thanks.

 

[doug293cz]

How bad the effect of over temp will be depends on how early in the mash it occurred. If it got to that temp very early in the mash cycle, then you very likely denatured all of your enzymes, and if that is the case longer mashing won't do much of anything. If it happened after about 30 minutes, or more. of mashing, then you probably got most of your conversion completed, and the beer should be ok, even if not exactly what your were looking for. Longer mashing isn't likely to have any effect in this case either, but won't hurt anything.

The fineness of your grain crush will also have a large influence on how much conversion you got before denaturing your enzymes. Finer crushes convert significantly faster, so more conversion can happen before the enzymes are completely denatured.

Brew on

 

[RM-MN]

How bad the effect of over temp will be depends on how early in the mash it occurred. If it got to that temp very early in the mash cycle, then you very likely denatured all of your enzymes, and if that is the case longer mashing won't do much of anything. If it happened after about 30 minutes, or more. of mashing, then you probably got most of your conversion completed, and the beer should be ok, even if not exactly what your were looking for. Longer mashing isn't likely to have any effect in this case either, but won't hurt anything.

The fineness of your grain crush will also have a large influence on how much conversion you got before denaturing your enzymes. Finer crushes convert significantly faster, so more conversion can happen before the enzymes are completely denatured.

Brew on

This has a huge effect on how long it takes to get full conversion. With my fine crush from my Corona mill, if I dough in at the right temp, I cannot raise the temperature fast enough to have much effect on the conversion as it will be completed in less than 5 minutes. Larger grain particles will take longer for the gelatinization of the starches and until that happens there will be no conversion.

 

[mesthay]

It happened within the first 10 minutes. When you say conversion do you mean how much sugars were pulled out the grains or what type of sugars? My SG was 1.060, does that matter? It was a nightmare brew day for a few other reasons, one that will not be forgotten for a long time. I actually can’t believe it made it to the fermenter... ha.

 

[raysmithtx]

I had a similar incident happen a few weeks ago. I forgot to turn the element off after turning off the recirculating pump. My wort temp went up to 170 degrees. This happened about 10 minutes into the mash. I figured the batch was a goner and would probably be really sweet due to the mash temp. I decided to just ride it out, I didn't add any water to the wort, just turned the pump on and let it run until the temp came back down. That took about 10 minutes. Since this batch was a goner I checked the OG after 45 minutes and it was at my post mash prediction so I stopped the mash.

The rest of the brew day went without problems and I was resigned to the fact that this was now a "brewing experiment".

I use a Tilt to measure the gravity and ferment in kegs so watching the gravity drop was pretty easy to do.

Surprisingly, the gravity dropped down to the 1.010 as predicted by Beersmith.

The only thing I can think of that saved this batch is that I double crush my grains and that allowed almost all of the conversion to be done within the first 10 minutes.

Beer tastes great!

I hope you have the same luck I did.

 

[RM-MN]

It happened within the first 10 minutes. When you say conversion do you mean how much sugars were pulled out the grains or what type of sugars? My SG was 1.060, does that matter? It was a nightmare brew day for a few other reasons, one that will not be forgotten for a long time. I actually can’t believe it made it to the fermenter... ha.

Your base malts will be mostly starches and proteins. When the starch is exposed to water in the right temperature range the enzymes will break down the starch to sugars. Whether these sugars are fermentable or not depends a lot on the temperature of the mash. Alpha amylase enzymes break down the starch to long chain sugars, beta amylase works on the long chain sugars to cut them into shorter sugars that the yeast can eat. This is the conversion we talk about. Your hydrometer measures the densitiy of the wort which is affected by the sugars and since you hit 1.060, I'd say you got decent conversion (unless you were expecting 1.100) and the mix of fermentable an unfermentable sugars can't be determined until the fermentation is complete and you can measure the FG and compare it to the expected FG.

 

[mesthay]

So far gravity is dropping fast. Down to 1.042 from 1.060 according to my tilt. I’ll update the post in a few weeks with the results.

 

[kricks111]

I did have this happen to an IPA I brewed a few years ago, but I wasn’t able to get the temp down like I did this time. The ABV didn’t have an issue, but it tasted like bad sweet tea. I’m hoping this one does not do that. Cross your fingers!! It is in the fermenter and the Amarillo and galaxy hops smell great!

 

[Ninoid]

My mash temperature dropped to 63 ° C so I heat and, somehow, preheat to 74 ° C. No any problems, but mash lasted more than half an hour before that.