Well if you have read any if my few recent posts, you can tell that Im still and ameteur all together as well as to all grain. Ive had troubles regulating mash temp in my keggle. I brew in garage in northern IL (GO HUSKIES) and in summer temps are 80-90. Id loose at least 20-30 degrees in mash temp overall. I finally got my keggle wrapped in reflectix today! Thank god. So I did a small 5g test run to callibrate thermometer as well as see how well reflectix worked. Well thermometer was spot on(this helps my confidence in my equipment a ton) insert jokes now hahaha! And from a 212 degree boil it only dropped to 170. Now that is 42 degrees but that was from a boil. If Im at a normal mash temp lets say from 149-152 would it hold better than it did from a boil? I also constructed a lid from 2 layers of the reflectix. Now the keggle also had 10g of dead space in this test run and no grains just water.
Mash Tun insulation
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20-30 degrees? that seems awful high do you have a lid? are you stiring? or were you when you lost that much temp? I have the same keggle setup and without the reflectix I may lose 2 deg in 60 min. I brewed today and didnt lose any at all. Do you also use a false bottom?
you will have a lower degree of temperature decrease as the gradient from vessel to air is not as high when you are at mashing temperatures. You should also experience less loss in a mash because of the viscosity of the mash. Water has the ability to take the energy from the center to the external cool area much easier than a viscous mash will.
Keggle? Are you referring to a converted 15.5 gal keg? I have brewed all grain for years with a 3 keg, gravity feed brew system in my garage in Seattle, winter or summer and never lost those kinds of temperatures. In your test you said you lost 42 degrees. The loss from a boil to say 185F will drop off pretty quickly. Quicker than it is from 185F to say 150F. Also, once you have the grain mixed with the water, the mass will give you a curtain amount of insulating quality.
I only stir it at the beginning, just enough to make sure there are no dry lumps. My system is bare naked.. no insulation at all. At the most I’ll lose about 3-5 degrees in the dead of winter, over a 1 hour mash. The only large temperature loss I see is when I dough in the grain. For a 10 gallon batch, I’ll start out with 6-7 gallons of 175F water, doughing in usually about 20 to 25 pounds of grain, depending on the starting gravity I’m shooting for. That will drop to 152-158F, depending on the temp of the grain. But that’s right where you want to mash at.
Try that and see if you have better luck stabilizing your mash temp mash.
I only stir it at the beginning, just enough to make sure there are no dry lumps. My system is bare naked.. no insulation at all. At the most I’ll lose about 3-5 degrees in the dead of winter, over a 1 hour mash. The only large temperature loss I see is when I dough in the grain. For a 10 gallon batch, I’ll start out with 6-7 gallons of 175F water, doughing in usually about 20 to 25 pounds of grain, depending on the starting gravity I’m shooting for. That will drop to 152-158F, depending on the temp of the grain. But that’s right where you want to mash at.
Try that and see if you have better luck stabilizing your mash temp mash.
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