Mash temp ?

[McAle]

I was cruising recipes on BYO and saw one for a Saison. It said to "dough-in at 149F and rest for 90 minutes.Then raise temp to 168F." My question is , how do you raise the mash temp in a plastic cooler type MLT? It's not like you can set the thing on a burner. Do you just add more hot water?

 

[DocScott]

You can add boiling water like you said but this can lead to a thin mash as it will take a fair amount of water to raise the temp up. On my system, like yours, i would do a decoction mash. This is when you remove a portion of the mash and heat it to a boil and add it back into the mash tun. This keeps your volumes consistent and is the more traditional way of increasing the mash temp in a multistage mash.

 

[Yooper]

They are describing a "mash out". If you're batch sparging, you will skip this step and drain the mash and proceed with adding your sparge water.

For those who do a continous/fly sparge, a mash out is generally performed. It's done by adding boiling water to the MLT (or raising the temp with direct fire or HERMS or RIMS) to get the grainbed to 168. Unless you have a HERMS, it's hard to do in a cooler.

 

[McAle]

DocScott, Yooper, thanks for the timely reply. I did some searching AFTER I hit the go button and found this has been discussed before. I don't have an MLT as I'm brewing with extract. That's why I wasn't sure how one could raise the temp in a plastic cooler. Thanks again.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

They are describing a "mash out". If you're batch sparging, you will skip this step and drain the mash and proceed with adding your sparge water.

For those who do a continous/fly sparge, a mash out is generally performed. It's done by adding boiling water to the MLT (or raising the temp with direct fire or HERMS or RIMS) to get the grainbed to 168. Unless you have a HERMS, it's hard to do in a cooler.

I always try to get my mash to 168 in my cooler at the end.

Usually if your splitting your mash/sparge water 50/50 you can get grain from 150 to 168 with like 190 degree sparge water or so...Beersmith gives you all that information though.

 

[Gameface]

They are describing a "mash out". If you're batch sparging, you will skip this step and drain the mash and proceed with adding your sparge water.

For those who do a continous/fly sparge, a mash out is generally performed. It's done by adding boiling water to the MLT (or raising the temp with direct fire or HERMS or RIMS) to get the grainbed to 168. Unless you have a HERMS, it's hard to do in a cooler.

I switched from batch to fly sparging some time ago but I've never really done a mash out. Am I missing out on something by not doing it? I get that it "locks-in" the mash profile, but I'm not sure I buy into that. If an experienced brewer like yourself told me it was true I would tend to believe it, though.

My sparge water is at ~170 in the HLT when I start my sparge. My 10g cooler is usually pretty full, so I don't think I could add enough boiling water to raise the temp 16*.

 

[Yooper]

I switched from batch to fly sparging some time ago but I've never really done a mash out. Am I missing out on something by not doing it? I get that it "locks-in" the mash profile, but I'm not sure I buy into that. If an experienced brewer like yourself told me it was true I would tend to believe it, though.

My sparge water is at ~170 in the HLT when I start my sparge. My 10g cooler is usually pretty full, so I don't think I could add enough boiling water to raise the temp 16*.

If you can't do a mash out, and the beers aren't overattenuating, then I think you're fine. When I didn't mash out when fly sparging, I noticed that my FG was a little lower than I planned so I started making sure to mash out. When I batch sparge, I just use a 202 degree infusion for the first round of batch sparging, and that brings the grainbed to 168- but it's not really necessary since the first runnings go onto boil right away.