What's the highest "safe" temperature for mash out?
- Thread starter MrBJones
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170* I believe.
I imagine you're worried about extracting tannins with a temp over 170* ? While I never have done it, I suppose if your pH is good, you can have a mashout temp as high as boiling. After all that what happens in a decoction. But you would have to check your pH.
Gnomebrewer
Well-Known Member
^^ This. But why would you want to? Typically you're only trying to 'turn off' the enzymes, at about 170F.
I haven't heard of anyone testing it lately, but general rule of thumb is 170°F.
Why would you want to?
Raising temps in a mash tun can be quite difficult unless you can directly heat it under constant stirring, or indirectly using a RIMS or HERMS system. I generally use a plastic cooler mash tun, but sometimes heat directly (3-ply bottomed kettle on an induction plate) when performing multi-step mashing, under constant stirring while heating. Some brewers add enough boiling water to their plastic mash tun to raise the mash to mashout temps, but that reduces the volume left for sparging.
When you're batch sparging, you're draining the mash tun fast enough, then heating the lautered wort as soon as it hits the kettle, so a mashout really is not necessary. You can then sparge with ~180-190F water to raise the temp of the lautered grist to 170F to arrest further conversion.
Now fly sparging can take an hour or more, so a mashout before lautering is more warranted there.
Raising temps in a mash tun can be quite difficult unless you can directly heat it under constant stirring, or indirectly using a RIMS or HERMS system. I generally use a plastic cooler mash tun, but sometimes heat directly (3-ply bottomed kettle on an induction plate) when performing multi-step mashing, under constant stirring while heating. Some brewers add enough boiling water to their plastic mash tun to raise the mash to mashout temps, but that reduces the volume left for sparging.
When you're batch sparging, you're draining the mash tun fast enough, then heating the lautered wort as soon as it hits the kettle, so a mashout really is not necessary. You can then sparge with ~180-190F water to raise the temp of the lautered grist to 170F to arrest further conversion.
Now fly sparging can take an hour or more, so a mashout before lautering is more warranted there.
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It is a balance. Sparge water alkaline, hot and grain bed exhausted? Bad. Sparge water acidified, not too hot and grain bed fresh? Good. A mixture? Usually ok? There are margins. When you get problems is when you get problems. I sparge at 80C to stop the mash, increase efficiency and reduce the time to boil which is technically too hot though my rA is 0-10ppm and I have never seen final runnings go below 1.009 or had a preboil pH over 5.5. If I need to dilute going into the boil I use treated water instead of continuing to sparge at this point. If I leave the mash tun draining you can usually see the point when you've over sparged, the run off goes cloudy with tannins. Usually this is at 1.006. If it was cooler or more acidic this might be lower, but I don't need to go this low.
If your pH is within the bounds for a good mash/sparge, you could bring it to a boil (done for decoctions) without extracting tannins. However, what's the point. If you batch sparge, mash out isn't needed and if you fly sparge anything over about 160 will stop enzyme activity. Hotter wort stops that activity sooner and the hotter wort comes to a boil quicker but if saving time is important, why are you fly sparging?
Boiling is safe.
