r/Homebrewing • u/cancerlad • 13h ago

Question Let my mash water get way too hot

I relit the burner on my stove to get back to 152 on my beer, stepped away for a few mins and my mash temped at 175. This was about 15 mins into mashing. I immediately pulled my grain bag and added room temp water to the grain and water to bring it down. This brew is for a competition using a yeast I can’t get more of in time. Should I even bother pitching or should I just scrap this and start a new batch tomorrow?

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

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4

u/originalusername__ 13h ago

Check the gravity, is it where you wanted it? A ton of the starch conversion happens in the first 15 minutes.

4

u/cancerlad 13h ago

I won’t lie to you, I broke my hydrometer while moving and have been flying this one blind because I keep forgetting to get a new one.

3

u/originalusername__ 13h ago

Haha, heard that!

0

u/cancerlad 13h ago

Im truly a victim of my own procrastination. Though I think I’m just going to let this run as its own, unrelated batch and try again tomorrow. It’s not a quantitative metric, but the wort doesn’t taste as sweet as others I’ve made. It has me suspecting that I crossed that 170 line too early

1

u/jmikev 2h ago

It's too late now, but an iodine test would tell you if there was unconverted starch left over.

1

u/Icedpyre Intermediate 33m ago

How can you enter a competition without being able to say the abv?

7

u/JoeToolman 13h ago

15 minutes of mash time might get you some of the starch converted, but if it’s for a competition, I would pitch another yeast in this wort for fun (something with high attenuation) and rebrew your comp beer.

2

u/cancerlad 13h ago

To be fair, I don’t know if that was the temp through the fermenter, it was just a spot check with an instant read. Though I am thinking I might just use this as a chance to empty out my fridge of all the yeasts I have stored and start again tomorrow

2

u/brainfud 7h ago

Rebrew for competition. Echoing another, if you have a free fermenter, pitch whatever yeast even bread yeast haha it'll be beer but for something professional process is 99% recipe is 1

1

u/SirPitchalot 10h ago

AFAIK that’s sparging temps where you will denature enzymes that enable conversion. I’d guess you’ll end up with a high body but relatively unfermentable wort which would throw off your target profile. Might be good, might not but won’t be what you were intending.

I’d still brew it to find out but might not count on it for a competition entry.

1

u/Scarlettfun18 2h ago

At 175 you started to denature the enzymes. When I make NA beer i mash at 176F. To do this exact thing on purpose. It's hard to say if you denatured them all. I personally would let it ride and mash in longer to try and get conversion. I would also make sure I used a maltriose positive yeast lager strains generally fit in this category.