• Welcome to the new forum! We upgraded our forum software with a host of new boards, capabilities and features. It is also more secure.
    Jump in and join the conversation! You can learn more about the upgrade and new features here.

Is there someway for me to find the exact specific heat for my mashtun?

A

atarlecky

Hi,

I have a 15 gallon Hobby Beverage Equipment Company Mash Lauter Tun that is 7mm thick and constructed of HDPE. I hesitate to use the .3 specific heat recommended for plastic in the equipment section because I don't know thermodynamics enough to know if the thickness and chemical composition of the plastic material affects that number.

Is there a calculator that allows me to enter something like the ambient temp, the temp of the water added, etc... and spits out a SH number for me?

Thanks.
 
Way old topic but I'm working on this issue myself

I'm just trying to use logic here
So last brewing session i took notes on all temperatures and volumes and realized a few things

my temps - weather 60F, grain 60F, MT 60F (all 'ish') and brewsmith called for 173F strike water temp
I'm using a 10 Gallon igloo for MT - it weights about 11lbs
i used 9lbs of grain

I used 186F for my strike water since i knew from past experience that beersmith has been prediciting low temps and i figured i'd aim high and stir down the mash to my mash in temp of 154F

once the MT and grain settled in - it was at 159F - a 27F difference

SOOOO - i read i needed to up my specific heat (SH) of my equipment

I made a dummy recipe and set my mash to single infusion with temps at 60F for MT and grain
then i'd go in to my equipment and up the SH a bit then re-add the equipment to the dummy recipe to recalculate the strike water temp

finally at SH 0.75 i reached strike water temp 182.2F which when I subtract the observed temp loss of 27F gets me 155.2F - a touch above what i'm aimin for at 154F and since I am using coolers I'd rather be higher than lower since i can just stir the temp down to what I'm aiming for....

In theory this idea seems like it should work and better help beersmith calculate a more accurate strike water/mash out temps....

although I haven't put the new calculations to a real-world test yet

 
guess i should mention that the hot water is going through tubing and a pump at outside temps ... that'll make a difference i bet

so perhaps i'm aiming for a SH or my set-up as opposed to just the MT
 
I am struggling with this too.  Rather than deal with figuring out the heat loss, I dumped 160f strike water in the mash tun for 10 minutes then drained it into the hot liquor kettle, dumped in my grains and went with the default heat loss.  I think I was close to my target temp.  Going with 156 and was shooting for 154.  I had 4 floating thermometers in the mash tun (48qt rubbermade cooler) and had 4 different temperatures.  Sigh :/
 
Back
Top