First mini-mash attempt

[inthedark]

I'm in the last 20 minutes of the mash, working from DaaB's instructions and keeping a steady temperature has been a complete nightmare! There's got to be an easier way.

Temperature started off quite stable at a handy 66.1deg for a good 15 minutes, then started plummetting. No matter what I did with the oven, it kept going down - the only thing I could do to get it back up was to put the pot back on the stove and try to heat it up.

Then it overshot so i had to add cold water to stop it going higher than about 73deg

I've just put up with it being up around 68 and falling - by the time it's finished, I reckon it'll be back to target temp.

Now, I've got a Thermos coolbox that I'm converting into a mash tun - would it be better just to use that for the mash (and still lauter in the bucket in bucket thing) - will that hold temperature better, or does the smaller volume disperse heat too quickly?

[Andy]

Hmmm, I've found keeping the mash temp within range to be fairly easy. You've got to take into account a big amount of thermal inertia in the oven though so if it's too hot then turning the oven down/off will take some time to affect the mash temp and likewise for if the oven's too cold and you turn the temp up. The key is to get the oven temp as close as possible to the desired mash temp, get an oven thermometer if you haven't already, they're pretty cheap.

[inthedark]

I've got an oven thermometer, but it's meant for cooking, so the nearest usable temperature reading is 100deg.

is the thermos box idea no good then?

[inthedark]

Well, I've just finished sparging and have set the wort on to boil. It didn't ever run at all clear though, although it does seem to be clear of floating bits. Hopefully it'll be fine.

Anyway, I've got about 7L pre-boil at about 1039. Sound OK?

[inthedark]

I managed it in a 20 year old elecy oven

Has anyone managed it in a gas oven? The dials don't have temperatures, just 'gas marks' and the lowest seems to sit it at about 100deg. I can get the flame to go lower, but then the thermostatic control stops doing anything! I tried to keep things going by opening the door, but really as soon as I noticed the temp dropping, it was already too late - I could turn the flame to max and nothing happened.

ooh - just coming to the boil!

[inthedark]

It didn't ever run at all clear though, although it does seem to be clear of floating bits.

This is all you are after, I mention this in the text, it has a lot to do with the grain. Fortunately the clarity of the run off has no effect on the final clarity of the beer

Thanks DaaB, I was hoping you'd say that. When you said 'clear', I couldn't tell whether you meant clear like water or just clear of bits and grit. It was quite cloudy, but not gritty.

[inthedark]

I'll give that a go next time - I'm having fun anyway!

I'm using a digital thermometer, but I need to come up with a way of suspending it in the mash so it doesn't touch the bottom of the pan - once I'd added a bit of water to cool it down it was too loose to support the probe. Worked great to start with, but I did start fretting over 0.1 deg changes

Boil seems to be going well, hopefully I'll have something to show for all this.

[inthedark]

After all the losses due to HUGE amount of break once it'd settled (and pretty poor siphoning on my part) I ended up with just over 1.5L @ 1077 which diluted down to just over 3L at 1042. At this rate I'll have 4 bottles to show for my efforts!

Going to have to do some thinking about how to improve performance before upping the volumes...

[Andy]

1.5L

I did a minimash on Saturday and ended up with 4L and topped up for 1L of filtered liquor. Where did you lose the volume ?

[inthedark]

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Just looking at my notes, it looks like I ended up with about 7L (ish) in the boiler, so maybe I could have sparged a little more?

Once the wort had cooled, I poured it into a 5L bucket via a colander but didn't take a note of the volume at that point

I let it settle for a bit and tried to decant via the tap into a PET 5L bottle. I hadn't left it long enough, so although I'd lost a bit in the break, there was much more to go. It came up about half way on the bottle.

[Andy]

OK!

I probably collected a little bit more ( 8 litres) and kept just over a litre back in a separate pan and only added this in the last 15 mins of the boil. I pre-boiled this extra wort before adding to the main batch so that the rolling boil would continue.

I didn't bother racking off from the break material in the fermenter instead I skimmed the yeast head after 24 hrs and removed virtually all the break via this method (there was lots of it).

[inthedark]

OK!

I skimmed the yeast head after 24 hrs and removed virtually all the break via this method (there was lots of it).

That sounds like a more efficient way of getting rid of the break, but means I can't use a bottle to ferment in, doesn't it? What d'you think?

[inthedark]

Daab, thanks, I'll bear that in mind. On the other matter though, would my earlier problems with temperature have lead to a smaller volume after sparging?

[Andy]

I used the 5L plastic bin to ferment in (the same bin as was used as the outer part of the mash tun). Prefer that approach to using a demijohn for primary fermentation. I'll rack to demijohn after fermentation is done, fit an airlock and put it in a cool dark place for a week.

[mysterio]

once there is no discernable sweet taste or once there is a slight dryness detectable

This is the method I use, just take a quick sip of the sparge runnings to see if they're still sweet