Mash and Strike Temperature

[alwilson]

Hi guys,

Using the same mash tun, does mash and strike temperature change if you scale a recipe up.

If I go from 100 to 200 litre brew lengths, do I keep my strike temp the same to achieve the same mash temp, or with extra grain and water do I need to decrease the strike because of the higher thermal mass in the tun.

As I said, its the exact same tun.

Likewise, hypothetically, if I went from a 200L B/L to 400, would anything need to change on the mashing side of things?

Cheers
Alex

[gregorach]

As long as the grain / liquor ratio remains the same, and the grain is at the same temperature, the same strike temp should give you the same mash temp.

[Kev888]

+1.
Although 'achieving' the same stable strike temperature can differ unless you pre-heat the MT, because a cool MT reduces the temperature of smaller volumes of liquor more than it affects bigger ones. Quite noticably I find, having a heavy stainless MT in an unheated garage.

Cheers
kev

[Eric]

While the initial temperature will be, as already said, the same if all amounts are varied in similar proportions, any temperature fall during the mash might not. Thermal loss will be more in proportion to surface area of the mash than to its mass. A rough and ready calculation (many variables come into play) suggests that any temperature loss could reduce by about 20% each time you double the size of a mash. With this in mind you may need to consider marginally reducing your mash (and thus strike) temperature to maintain a similar result to that obtained at the lesser quantities.