Temp too low for grain??

[stee41]

Hi all

After I stuffed my last brew by sparging at 79c, I now have done the opposite and forgot to preheat my mashtun, I sparged the grain with 69c water and the temp dropped to 59c almost immediately but has held steady since then, I tried adding boiling water to get the temp up but this did not work, so I now have 90 mins at 59c, what are the consequences for my final wort?

yours F********* distressed..what a waste!!

[boingy]

I think you mean "mashed" rather than "sparged". Sparging is the rinsing bit after the 90 minute mash is complete.

Mashing at 59C is quite a bit too low. I'm not actually sure precisely what the end result will be but I'm pretty sure you will not be able to make a half-decent beer with it.

Take a sample, cool it to 20C and measure the SG with your hydrometer and post the results.

Edit: Been pondering this some more and I suspect you could rescue it by draining the wort into your boiler, heating it up to (I'm guessing) about 72C and then re-mashing. The basis for this suggestion is that you can do multi-step mashes which start at lower temperatures. Not sure how to calculate the correct temperature to heat the wort to though.

[Horatio]

I think Boingy has a good suggestion there. I'm sure there is a thread on here somewhere that explains how to do just that; it may have been called Double Decoction or some such??

[stee41]

yeah, strike water was 79c, temp dropped to 59c and held for 90 mins, ended up with 20L of wort, topped up to 23L gives me 1.038 @20c I'm well pleased with that considering I thought I messed everything up!

EDIT: I did exactly what Boingy said, at least I got something right, thanks boys

[micromaniac]

yeah, strike water was 79c, temp dropped to 59c and held for 90 mins, ended up with 20L of wort, topped up to 23L gives me 1.038 @20c I'm well pleased with that considering I thought I messed everything up!

EDIT: I did exactly what Boingy said, at least I got something right, thanks boys

did exactly the same on my last brew what i ended up with was a wort with no unfermentable sugars in so the fg went down to 1.006 on the one batch and 1.008 on the other. from what i have been reading you just end up with a dryer ale.had a taste on kegging day and it was fine.so i would,nt worry to much

[far9410]

why such a big temp drop, were the grains very cold?

[stee41]

Yeah, made a right hash of it, cold mashtun, cold grains!! I attempted to salvage by sitting the mastun on a heated tray, and sparged with higher temp water, everything else went to plan hahaha!