Grain brewing advise. I need help with time and temperature with the mash. How to control the mash?

Question

We are going to start grain brewing and I want to impress my husband with my brewing knowledge. : )

Answer 1

I use a large chilli bin to help maintain the temperature. I put in water at about 70c first and put the lid on whilst I get the grains and the actual brewing water ready. The chilli bin I have has a drain on it making it perfect for mashing. I drain the first lot of water as this is just to get the bin up to temperature and the I add the grains and brewing water, which is around 75 c as the grain will drop the water temperature to around 65c. I leave this for at least 90 minutes before drawing of the liquor. I then use a clean watering can sprinkler and fresh water at around 70c to "sparge the wort", or gently spray hot water over the grains to recover the last of the sugars.

Answer 2

These last two suggestions will work well. The book ideas is good also.

If you have an insulated mash tun (vessel barley malt is steeped in) you will not need to be concerened with controlling it. Just set it and go.

That and long with the heat source suggestions above you will be fine.

Answer 3

Control it with careful temperature checks. You can add heat by adding boiling water or a burner if using a SS pot. If you are outside brewing, as some friends of mine are, use a converted picnic cooler such as Igloo. It will give some insulation. If you are real concerned they used a spray foam insulator in the walls of the cooler. You can also add a theromoter through the wall. This way you can read the temp. without lifting the lid and letting out heat thus cooling the mash.

Answer 4

I would recommend getting a book on beer brewing, for example "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing" by Charlie Papazian is a good one.  Now to answer your question, the optimal temperature is from 145 degrees to 158 degrees and depending on the temperature you have it, it could be 15-25 minutes or 45-90 minutes.  In general, the lower the temp, the longer it will take to convert the starches to fermentable sugars and dextrins.