First All Grain Batch

[smeekster]

Several Questions after what felt like a long day brewing, hope this batch turns out better than the extract batch it was modeled after. I have two round coolers a 5 gal hlt, and 10 gal mash tun, 10 gal kettle. Built a gravity feed tower for the group, with a home made fly sparging arm that worked great.

11 lbs golden promise, 1.5 lbs munich 10l, 4oz crytal 50/60l

1. What is a good mash calculator for strike water calculations? Grains were 64 deg, strike water was 169, preheated the tun slightly, and only got to about 144. wtf. eventually got to 152 after some boiling water. Are there any programs that help figure out adjusting the mash temp if your off the first try? Any thoughts on taking into account the outside temperature when brewing on a cold day, like I had (for sparging temps and strike temps)?

2. when fly sparging should I keep the hlt water flowing until I’ve collected my wort volume or kill the hlt flow when Im close to the desired volume and let the remaining liquid drain out of the mash tun completely?

sorry for the rambling its late. Any and all thoughts or opinions would be most welcomed.

ps.ended up with- bg: 1.052 with 7 gallons collected, og: 1.070 76% eff? i think?

[johnplctech]

I have some calculators on my web site…

http://gnipsel.com/beer/software/beer-software.html

John

[rookie_l_a]

[quote=“smeekster”]

1. What is a good mash calculator for strike water calculations? Grains were 64 deg, strike water was 169, preheated the tun slightly, and only got to about 144. wtf. eventually got to 152 after some boiling water. Are there any programs that help figure out adjusting the mash temp if your off the first try? [/quote]

I never took the grain temperature, but figured out pretty quickly that I got about a 25 degree drop like you did so I go for 25 above my desired mash temp and usually get pretty close.
If it’s a bit over stirring gets it down a bit, if it’s under a small addition of hot water usually works.

[stormybrew]

http://www.brewcalcs.com/

this one works very well for me.

cheers.

[nighthawk]

John’s MashWater 3.3 is a great program.

I start my water close to 180. Even nearer to boiling. Add that to the MT. Allow the cooler to warm up and the water to cool down to my desired temp, usually around 160. Add ~65d grain and the temp stabilizes a bit above 150. Stir the grain to get it to cool to 150.

[mvsawyer]

I did a partial mash this weekend with grain from the freezer. I used the calc on this site: http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml to get a 150F mash from 45F grain. Got the water to 163, mashed in, and hit strike temp on the button.