Trouble with mash, brew in progress

[johow440@gmail.com]

This is a 2.75 gal BIAB batch, I'm trying to brew in a 5 gal kettle. Just brought 3 gallons of strike water up to 160 and added my grain, it is really thick but I can't fit anymore water in that kettle with this much grain. I stirred as best I could but my temp dropped way down to around 140 or so. I termed on the store and stirred but though the bottom heats up to mash temp I can't get the temp to evenly distribute because the mash is so thick.
I've got another kettle with 2 gallons of spare water heating but I can't use it to warm up the mash till I take the grain out.
Any ideas?

 

[Brew Cat]

Besides a bigger pot you could not mash your specialty grain. Hold them back and just steep them in your wort after you collect it. Just curious, how much grain is your recipe?

 

[johow440@gmail.com]

7.25 lbs, the grain was milled together so I couldn't hold those back.

 

[Brew Cat]

That's 1.6 quarts per pound you should be able to mash that I've gone to 1.25 in a tun. It's probably a little harder to stir in a bag. How long did it take to mash in? It shouldn't take more than a couple minutes at most. You could wrap your pot with a blanket. If you have to add heat put on a glove and pull the bag and dunk dunk like a tea bag so it doesn't burn. I've never had to do that myself but it should work.

 

[oliver]

my last brew session i had a similar thing happen, the mash was way thicker than i imagined, at 1.25 qts/lbs... Just took a few minutes of stirring to hydrate all the grain before i got it to loosen up, but it mashed fine.

 

[johow440@gmail.com]

Something very strange happened actually. BF called for 7.25 lbs of grain and 4.95 gallos of water but I was trying to brew this in a 5 gallon kettle so I heated 3 gallons of strike water and had 2 gallons of sparge water at the ready. Coughing in caused my mash temp to drop from 159 down to about 140 and the mash was so thick that it was very difficult to stir though I did. I even turned the burner back on and tried to heat it back up while stirring but I couldn't get an even heat distribution, hot at the bottom cooler near the top. After an hour, I pulled the bag and sparked as much as my kettle would low and went on with the boil. I think part of the problem is that in my kettle there is a false bottom that rides on a ledge in the kettle but it is too far up from the bottom so probably a gallon and a half of my sparge water is under the false bottom. The weird thing is I ended up way over my numbers with the OG at 1.072 when the estimated OG was 1.058.