What can I say? Ooops. Forgot to mash out at the end of the mash. I mashed for 90 mins at 150*, sparged with 180* water, but neglected to mash out. I did the boil right after sparging, but I don’t know what effect this will have. What are the possible effects of not mashing out?
You probably won’t know the difference.
Agreed, shouldn’t be any problem.
Be glad for the time you saved-I almost never do a mashout anymore.
Right on, thanks guys! Good to know.
Are you batch sparging or fly sparging?
Regardless, when mashing for high fermentability like that, I don’t think you’d want to mash out.
Why would you not want to mash out when striving for high fermentability? That doesn’t make sense to me. I do it and get great attenuation.
The whole idea behind a mash-out is to fix the fermentability of the wort before starting the sparge. If you’re trying to maximize attenuation, some extra time at mash temperature could only help.
OK I see where you’re going. I assumed that anyone going after high fermentability would have extended their mash times, so that little extra mash time wouldn’t make much difference. I also like to mash out, because it heats the mash a little, so more sugars are rinsed during the sparge. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. ;D
Mash temp far more critical. Usually my mashout doesn’t take it into the denature zone when I do 12 gallon batches. IIRC Jamil and JP were kinda iffy on the “loosening” of the sugar concept. But, it makes sense to me. 
Otherwise I don’t see it affecting the wort profile.
But it is worth discussing. And, does it matter if the wort sits cooling in grants for any period of time?
The idea that a high temperature mashout would increase the amount of dissolved sugars was a popular opinion for years, but it hasn’t held up to experimentation. It can give the illusion of increasing dissolved sugars if you haven’t reached 100% conversion at the end of the mash, however. Those guys never seem to talk about research, though, so I don’t know if they actually pay attention to the experiments.
Yeah, what Kai found is not that it isn’t reduced viscosity that’s increasing efficiency, but rather it’s increased mash conversion.
Isn’t that a circular definition? You get better efficiency because there’s better conversion? What other kind of efficiency is there?
Kai divides things into conversion efficiency and lauter efficiency. Effectively, how efficient your mash is, and how efficient you are at lautering out the wort. I dunno, makes sense to me.
I agree. Given plenty of time for complete conversion, a mash out would only improve lauter efficiency. I always go at least 90 minutes for mash time, but more often I go 2 hours. After that seems to be diminishing returns.
Assuming 100% conversion before beginning lautering, wouldn’t the lauter efficiency depend only on how much water is run off, and in what increments?
That’s what I have understood to this point. That’s why batch sparging results in small loss of efficiency isn’t it?
Well, I think a mash out and sparging with water to keep it just below 170F helps a lot, at least it has in my experience.
As for adding more water, sure you can keep going ( within limits, of course), but after a while you’ll spend more time and money on a longer boil than it’s probably worth,
Maybe, but that’s hard to imagine after getting 96% mash efficiency on my brew last Sun.
Right. The more you divide up the sparge into smaller and smaller batches, the more thoroughly it’s possible to rinse the grain bed. When fly sparging, the number of “batches” is infinite, so efficiency is maximized.
That’s what I was wondering about - once the mash has fully converted, I’m not sure what the mechanism would be that would improve lauter efficiency based on temperature. Kai even did a batch sparge using cold (15°C) water and the efficiency compared to the hot sparge was about the same. It sounds like your results were different, though. Were the batches otherwise identical?