OVHA Chat

So I broke down on Black Friday and purchased a mash tun igloo cooler. Going to try my hand at true all grain rather than the BIAB method. Want to see if this makes a difference in my beers.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
One question I do have, when mashing with BIAB I always stirred the mash about every 15 min. Everything I'm reading says nothing about stirring in a mash tun. Is this step not necessary?



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Stir the mash, that's what the paddles for!

How often should I stir? Won't I lose heat? In BIAB I am able to fire up if need to increase temps.

Stir the crap out of it while you are adding the water to it. I put water in first maybe like 1/4 volume, then add little grain, then stir, then more water, then more grain then stir. Once its full and mixed up really well where I am confident there aren't any dry patches I come back and stir maybe every 15-20 minutes or so. My efficiency shot up 10% when I switched away from a cheap bendy plastic mash paddle to a big solid wooden mash paddle. And for a cooler if you mash in at say 152, you will need to heat the water to around 162-5 because it will loose heat during the transfer and then during the mash. Same with sparge

Thanks for the info! I have a "Dutch made" paddle!
One other question beer smith shows on the mash steps a 2 minute rise time... What the heck is a rise time?

20 minute rise time maybe? they are talking about doing a step up mash where you start at one temp and then increase the temp. I don't do it, there have been mixed studies on infusion mashing.

Over 80% of all grain brewers use a simple one stage infusion or single stage temperature mash, typically with either an insulated mash tun such as a water cooler or a mash tun over a heat source to maintain the mash step temperature. Beersmith recommends using a single infusion or single stage temperature mash if you are new to partial mash or all grain brewing.

Here is something on it on the Beersmith help site

http://www.beersmith.com/Help/using_mash_profiles.htm

Here is an example. All values were prefilled by recipe and beersmith

In a cooler I only stirred during mash in. Once everything was wet, I just put the lid on and let it sit. After an hour, I'd run off about 1/2 gallon then pour that gently back in to clear the runoff, then sparge with 180 degree water till I got the volume I wanted to boil.
In my 5 gallon cooler it would loose 1-2 degrees in that hour depending on how full it was. I could fit 13 pounds of grain with a thick mash in the 5 gallon cooler.

I agree with what John said. That is pretty much exactly the same process I use.

Blancaster wrote:So I broke down on Black Friday and purchased a mash tun igloo cooler. Going to try my hand at true all grain rather than the BIAB method. Want to see if this makes a difference in my beers.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
One question I do have, when mashing with BIAB I always stirred the mash about every 15 min. Everything I'm reading says nothing about stirring in a mash tun. Is this step not necessary?