grain first or water????

[bonnierider]

Using an Electrim mash boiler any preferance .-heat the water up to mashing temp and add the grain ,or mix the grain with cold water and heat up together.This is my second all grain brew and any advice gladly taken. I am using a mash bag to hold the grain. :

 

[pittsy]

heat water up first then add grain slowly mixing well to avoid dough balls

 

[dennisking]

By far the best way is to underlet. Heat the mash tun first, I put 2 boiling kettles of water and leave for around 15 mins, add grain to MT then connect a tube between the tap on the HLT and MT and fill that way, filling from the bottom. You will get almost no clumping and an even dispersal of heat. This is the way professional and more experienced brewers tend to do it.

 

[Baz Chaz]

I weigh the grain out into 2 halves, put half into a bucket, add the hot water to the grain giving a real good mixing then into the mash tun, repeat, works for me, not had a stuck mash or clumping at all so far :thumb:

 

[Mark1964]

By far the best way is to underlet. Heat the mash tun first, I put 2 boiling kettles of water and leave for around 15 mins, add grain to MT then connect a tube between the tap on the HLT and MT and fill that way, filling from the bottom. You will get almost no clumping and an even dispersal of heat. This is the way professional and more experienced brewers tend to do it.

Its a bit hard to underlet using an electrim bin trust me i know as we had one when starting out

 

[dennisking]

Strange that Mark, I use an Electrim bin as my HLT and the tap is the same size as the one on my MT so I can link them with no problem.

 

[Mark1964]

depends on what your using i suppose our tap on hlt was nowhere near the same size

 

[Dave1970]

By far the best way is to underlet. Heat the mash tun first, I put 2 boiling kettles of water and leave for around 15 mins, add grain to MT then connect a tube between the tap on the HLT and MT and fill that way, filling from the bottom. You will get almost no clumping and an even dispersal of heat. This is the way professional and more experienced brewers tend to do it.

Dennis...could you go into a bit more detail on this?..I use a coolbox mashtun. I'd normally add my 2.5 litres/kg of water having calculated the temp of the water using the tool in Brewmate. I could see how I could easily preheat the tun, drain the preheat water and then add grain. Filling from the bottom is also easy enough. How do you know when you've added the right amount of water? If I just underlet until the grain bed was covered how could I be sure to hit my target temp?

 

[evanvine]

How do you know when you've added the right amount of water?

Calibrate your HLT, then you will know how much liquor you have transferred!

 

[dennisking]

By far the best way is to underlet. Heat the mash tun first, I put 2 boiling kettles of water and leave for around 15 mins, add grain to MT then connect a tube between the tap on the HLT and MT and fill that way, filling from the bottom. You will get almost no clumping and an even dispersal of heat. This is the way professional and more experienced brewers tend to do it.

Dennis...could you go into a bit more detail on this?..I use a coolbox mashtun. I'd normally add my 2.5 litres/kg of water having calculated the temp of the water using the tool in Brewmate. I could see how I could easily preheat the tun, drain the preheat water and then add grain. Filling from the bottom is also easy enough. How do you know when you've added the right amount of water? If I just underlet until the grain bed was covered how could I be sure to hit my target temp?

Never been one to worry about grain to water ratios etc. I basically just use experience. I heat 15lts to my usual strike temp. 78c knowing I will only use around 13lts. When the grain is well covered I turn off the taps but turn the HLT back on in case I need to up the temp. slightly. After a few minutes of mixing and checking temp. I know I if I will need to add a bit of hot or cold water but this is very rare. Today's brew hit bang on 66c. as do most brews give or take a very little. Only took 2 or 3 brews to find my parameters.

 

[chrisb2k]

Personally I've calibrated my HLT but only in 5 litre increments, so mine is always "roughly" 2.5:1

I also run in the water before grain and, though I've not had problems with dough balls, but I do suffer from uneven temp even with vigorous stirring.

Underletting is the way forward I think.

 

[evanvine]

Underletting is the way forward I think.

It is a good method, just do it a little carefully, else you will have the grain trying to climb out of the MT!

 

[oz11]

Reviving an old thread, but seemed relevant so here we go.

My mash tun is a converted cool box with a false bottom. I had 3kg (brewing up a mild) of grain (at 15c) and was mashing at 2.5L/kg aiming for 67c. I heated the mash liquor to 78c and then underlet into the cool box.

I found I had a huge temperature difference between the bottom of the grain bed, where the temperature was around 70c and towards the top where it was around 62c. I gave it a good stirring, moving the grain from the bottom to the top, left it 5 or 6 mins but couldn't get this to even out. In the end I added more hot water to the top of the mash to bring that up to temperature.

I have tried this underletting method once before with a larger grain bill and didn't seem to have this problem, or if I did I didn't check the temperature in as many points in the mash. Instinct seems to tell me it would likely be a potential issue in a bigger grain bill rather than a smaller one?

Has anyone else experienced this or got any tips?

Cheers!

 

[evanvine]

One answer would be to recirculate using a HERMS.

 

[oz11]

Indeed...and I intend to upgrade to a Braumeister next year :party: