Beer Forum

I brewed an ESB yesterday. This was my 3rd all grain brew. By some silly oversight I undershot my mash temp. I was shooting for 152 and hit 144 (my first two all grain attempt, I hit my desired temps exactly). In this case I forgot to buy new hose for my HLT, and just let the strike water free fall into the mash tun (note to self: don't do that again, you lose alot of heat). My second mistake was not having hot and cold water ready for adjustments.

As a result, my mash sat at 144 for 15 minutes while I boiled some water to bring it up to 152. My question is as follows:

Since it sat in the mid beta amylase zone for 15 minutes and then mashed at 152 for an hour more what can I expect in terms of the difference as opposed to if it had mashed at 152 for the whole mash? Will this beer be extremely dry?

rich wrote:Since it sat in the mid beta amylase zone for 15 minutes and then mashed at 152 for an hour more what can I expect in terms of the difference as opposed to if it had mashed at 152 for the whole mash? Will this beer be extremely dry?

The beer will be a little drier, but not by much. The 152F already gives you a more fermentable wort to begin with. The difference might be equivalent to missing the mash temp by +/- 1 degree. Don't worry to much, but note the actual mash schedule in your log, so you can look back when you know the attenuation of this wort.

And w/o significant alpha amylase activity, the beta amyase cannot work on all of the starch anyway.

Kai