mthomebrew
Brewer
Hey all, yesterday I conducted my first partial mash and I have some questions/concerns. Firstly, I was mashing 4 1/2 lbs of grains, so I heated 8.25 quarts of strike water to approximately 165 for a target temp of 152. When I added the water to the grain, the temperature seemed to drop fast, and after about 10 minutes it was down to 140. I pre-heated the cooler before mashing to prevent extreme temperature loss, but it did not seem to help. I have a 5 gallon Igloo drink cooler for my mash tun. I did a heat test prior to mashing to get an idea of how well the cooler held temp and calculated a 7 degree loss/30 min. My grain was room temp when I mashed, not sure why I had such rapid heat loss. To try and keep the temp in the desired range, I was adding hot water. Now this is my concern, I am worried that the amount of water I added to keep the temperature up threw off my whole batch. I ended up adding about 3.5 quarts of extra water. After my 1 hour mash, I tried to stay on track with the recipe and recirculated, then drained off my starting capacity(8.25 quarts) and then added 4 quarts of 180 water for the mashout. I then drew off the 4 quarts and proceeded with my 3 gallon boil. I had about 3.5 quarts of wort leftover in my cooler. I'm sad I had to leave all of those fermentables out of the batch. After temperature fluctuations and adding water my efficiency seems like it was in the toilet. After the boil I added the 4.1 lbs of DME. I took a gravity reading of 1.056 before pitching the yeast. My main question is, how can I consistently maintain a mash temp? Second question is, if I need to add water to maintain a temperature, how do I adjust the rest of the mash accordingly as to not leave any wort behind? Thank you in advance!!