Got Dem Old Winter Blues Again

[hazard]

What happens if you mash at 57 deg?? Here's what happened this morning ...
Making a Foreign Export Stout. Got up at 6am to mash in. Heated my wash water to 77deg, added it to the tun and stirred in the grain to make sure there was no dough balls. Quick temp check before I put on the lid and wrap her up - but before I do this I better check my mash temp - WTF - its 57 deg!!

So what has gone wrong here? Well, I usually bank on losing 10deg between strike temp and mash temp, but a few things have changed.
1. I've just upgraded from a 19L rubbermaid to a 26L rubbermaid, which will have a higher thermal mass. Also, as it was damn cold last night even inside, it was probably at a temp of 10deg before I added mash water.
2. This is a big beer, and grain bill weighs in at 7.2kg. So more thermal mass than normal. I also left the grain in the grain in the car overnight, so its at a temp of about 3deg.
3. It was 6am, since I'm on holidays I was only half awake, i could have misread the strike temp entirely.

Bottom line - with 7kg of grain and 20L of liquor, my tun is full to the brim, no room to add some boiling water to get the temp up higher. Nothing for it but to put the lid on, go back to bed, lets set the alarm for another 2 hours because I expect conversion (if there is any) will be pretty slow at this temp.

After 2 hours I took a sample, OG reads at 1.100 - pretty much what I would expect for a big beer like this. So I've drained the tun, sparged with another 15L of water, and now got the kettle boiling. So my question - does OG reading indicate that conversion has in fact occurred? If so, what would I expect from a mash at this low temp? Will it be highly attenuable because of low temp? Or should I use extra yeast? I've just bottled a batch of porter, and still got a load of slurry, so I can load her up if I need to. What to do? Anybody else had this problem?

Thanks for any advice.
hazard

 

[neonmeate]

hmm you could have taken half of it out and decocted it to raise the temp?

 

[unrealeous]

I've never mashed this low, but at 57 C, the Beta Amylase enzyme will be turning the mash into Maltose, so the good news is the conversion would definitely occur and you are going to get a very fermatable wort. The flip side is that as you've said, its probably going to be highly attenuable, so might lack in body. However, since you've started out with a massive grain bill - it might end up ok. A new beer undiscovered style perhaps - a light easy drinking very alcoholic beer h34r:

http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f79.gif

 

[Fourstar]

Considering you are mashing at the very low end of B Amylase, it is typically suggested you would end up with a relatively high attenuative wort. However, there is only so much conversion b amylayse can perform without the help of alpha. The mash temperature you used is well outside the optimal range of A Amylase so it probabaly wouldnt be overly active at this temperature, although reports suggest very high attenuation at 60deg so it might be doing its job to help break down the strach matrix for b amylase, just alot slower. The only issue is i have never seen reports lower so i cant confirm exactly how fermentable your beer will be.

Also, the same goes for B amylase. Its still a few deg lower than its 'optimal temperature'. Will the 2 hour mash time be your saviour? Possibly w/respect to conversion but you are still going to end up with a highly fermentable wort i suspect.

 

[hazard]

hmm you could have taken half of it out and decocted it to raise the temp?

Errr - that's a good idea, I always do single infusion mashes (for my preferred British-style beers) so this never occurred to me. D'oh!

Considering you are mashing at the very low end of B Amylase, it is typically suggested you would end up with a relatively high attenuative wort. However, there is only so much conversion b amylayse can perform without the help of alpha. The mash temperature you used is well outside the optimal range of A Amylase so it probabaly wouldnt be overly active at this temperature, although reports suggest very high attenuation at 60deg so it might be doing its job to help break down the strach matrix for b amylase, just alot slower. The only issue is i have never seen reports lower so i cant confirm exactly how fermentable your beer will be.

Also, the same goes for B amylase. Its still a few deg lower than its 'optimal temperature'. Will the 2 hour mash time be your saviour? Possibly w/respect to conversion but you are still going to end up with a highly fermentable wort i suspect.

I'm going to use WY1968 with this one, hoping that it balances out a highly fermentable wort and gives something reasonable. Or if it does indeed come out to dry, I can call it an Indian Stout Ale, kinda like those new Indian Black Ales, but with more roasty flavour! I'll obviously need to check OG, and if it comes out below 1010 then I'll dry hop with EKG to complete the picture!

 

[Hazy]

Being in Hobart Ive had the same trouble in winter until I started adding some boling water(2 lts) to the tun whilst waiting for my strike water to get to temp. Never miss now, just remember to empty out the boiling water befor adding the strike water.

 

[brettprevans]

hmm you could have taken half of it out and decocted it to raise the temp?

its this or add more hotter water to raise temp. if youve got a fairly full tun then decoc is your only option.

I had the same problem on friday for both my beers. first beer i had to do 4 decoctions to get the bloody temp up. the 2nd brew i only had to do 2. damn cold weather.

now of course with decoctions, remember that traditionally they take the grain and liquid but a lot of grain and heat it up as it has a lot more thermal mass and thus less volme of grain than liquid to heat the mash up. you just dont want to boil the grain of course, where as you can get away with boiling the liquid if neccesary (but nopt advisable).

this is why i tend to run a thick mash, so if i do come in under target mash tmep i can add more stinking hot water to the tun and reach target mash temp.

 

[beerbrewer76543]

One of the benefit of going for a HERMS or RIMJOB setup, self correcting after the initial strike

One day I will finish my HERMS jobby... Not enough hours in the week!

And yes it is bloody cold in the mornings, even in Perth! It's been around zero in the mornings for the last week or so... Freaky for us!

 

[brettprevans]

One of the benefit of going for a HERMS or RIMJOB setup, self correcting after the initial strike

One day I will finish my HERMS jobby... Not enough hours in the week!

yup. after seeing chappos HERMS in action i just cant resist switching. makes step mash a breeze. just not enough $ in the nabk is my issue

And yes it is bloody cold in the mornings, even in Perth! It's been around zero in the mornings for the last week or so... Freaky for us!

something like the longest coldest stretch of morning in perth for ~130 years or something ridiculous like that. it sucks huh? it was bloody cold in melb friday morning when i mashed in at 9:30am. it took my HLT about 70min to heat 50L instead of ~40min. PITA!


edit: and OT

RIMJOB

I thought a rimjob was something youd see/hear about on a differant type of website :lol:

 

[Barry]

While it is too late to help I had a similar problem a couple of days ago. Mash temp of a bock was 60oC rather than 67oC. Run off a couple of litres of wort, boiled it (not too long) added it back and achieved the temp. Remembered this advice from someone else. Comes in handy when mash tun room is scarce.

 

[hazard]

I've left this brew on the heat pad at 18deg for 1.5 week, then ramped up to 20 deg for the last week. Measured FG was 1019, (OG was 1072) so this gives AA of 73% - pretty much what I would expect from Wy1968. So in the end, seems like everything has turned out OK. Tasted pretty good out of sample jar as well.

This has been a learning experience for me, seems like pre-heating the mash tun is something to think about next time, and decoction is something I need to learn about. But I wonder if you ever stop learning in this game? I've now done about 30 brews over the last 2.5 years since I started this hobby, the last 15 have been AG, and every time I think I've got everything sorted I find another way to cock things up. But this forum has been a tremendous resource, and I would still be on K&K without all the guidance and assistance received here. So thanks to everyone for the feedback above, and more generally for sharing on AHB.

 

[Bribie G]

Just a late and fairly trivial comment but, if your MT is big enough, don't worry about getting a thinner mash if you need to add some boiling water, we BIABBers do the thinnest of mashes and they turn out fine :icon_cheers: