I’m trying to nail down what my strike water temps need to be on my system to get my desired mash temp. I’m using the dreaded not blue 10 gallon gott MLT. Did my 1st AG brew following along “How to Brew”, and it got me pretty close but surprisingly I don’t find a graph for calculating strike temps for a preheated tun. I have beersmith, and there is a place to set mashtun temp, but I have no idea what to enter after I add 2 gallons of boiling water and let it rest 10 minutes per HTB. I kept good records, and know I lost 8 degrees after stirring in the mash and about 4 degrees over the 60 min sacc rest. Is it just a matter of repetition and getting to know my system or is there a chart somewhere I can use to get close? Should I skip the preheat and just use beersmith with a roomtemp mashtun setting?
Seriously, though, the preheating is to avoid adjusting your temperatures. If you’re heating your mash tun up in the 150 range, you shouldn’t have to worry.
I usually calculate my mash temperature (using Brewzor on my phone) and then heat the strike water about 5 degrees warmer. I dump the water in, stir it, and I am always pretty close to what my strike water is supposed to be. Once it gets down to that temperature, I add my grain and mash as usual.
IMO, its easier to take heat away than add heat, so I prefer to have my strike water a couple degrees hot.
[quote]just experimented for 2-3 brews to find out how much hotter I needed to make the water so I didn’t need to preheat. IMO, that’s way easier.
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Makes sense, and eliminates (at least for me) a kettle out of the equation. I used my regular kettle for strike water and my old 5 gallon for the preheat water. My last brew, if I remember correctly called for 158 mash temp and with the preheat my strike water was 167 degrees. Beersmith calced like 178 for the MLT at room temp. So basically I only have to heat my strike water 11 more degrees and I dont have to boil 2 gallons on the side. Seems like a no-brainer if the software is right
If you click on Help for the strike calcs in BeerSmith, it’ll explain the formula to use to calculate it. I’m a geek so I use that formula in a spreadsheet to calculate all my strike, sparge, even decoction temps. You could certainly stick that formula in a spreadsheet and have it creat that graph you’re looking for.
I don’t pre-heat. It makes a bit of difference if the ambient temp outside is 55 degrees versus 95 degrees. The Mash Tun cooler and grains tend to be at ambient temp. I tend to follow the BeerSmith recs and as long as I am at strike temp (when it is 105-95 degrees F outside) up to +5 over strike temp (when it is 55 F degrees outside), I should be fine. 1 degree increase in strike temp for every 10 degrees below 105 seems to work for me–Fuzzy math.
If necessary, I add a little more boiling water to nudge it up a few degrees to the desired Mash Temp and a little cool water if I’ve overshot. I don’t worry too much in the first 5 minutes. Definitely want to check temps from multiple areas of the mash (after stirring) and average them to get an idea of how well you’ve stirred and hit your temps.
And don’t do like I did: use Beersmith and tell it grain temp is 72F but put the crushed grain in the fridge until right before dough in…totally missed the strike temp… :o