Pre-heating mash tun

[murl]

So Do you really have to preheat the tun with a gallon of boiling water? It seems to me that it would make more sense to heat your strike water 5-10 degrees hotter than you calculate, pour it in, allow it to cool to your strike temp then start stirring in your grains. Is there anything wrong with this?

[Joos]

Thats what I do. A gallon wouldnt do much to my MLT.

[rdwj]

You don't HAVE to pre-heat at all, but it makes it easier to meet your target temps. I don't use boiling water - just the hottest water I can get off the tap.

[PseudoChef]

So Do you really have to preheat the tun with a gallon of boiling water? It seems to me that it would make more sense to heat your strike water 5-10 degrees hotter than you calculate, pour it in, allow it to cool to your strike temp then start stirring in your grains. Is there anything wrong with this?

I do this same thing. :k:

[karmabrew]

I do this same thing. :k:
I do this as well! :k2:

[salad 419]

I do this as well! :k2:

I don't know what I do, but I wanted to use the knights.

:k2::k:

[murl]

I suppose you could calculate the specific heat of he tun but that seems like to much work. It just seems like you could be really accurate by letting the tun absorb the heat and warm up open the lid and let it lower to the strike temp and you should be right on the money.

[Barley-Davidson]

On beersmith I enter the temp of the MLT and the grain and it compensates, so I've never preheated my mash tun.

[Joos]

I suppose you could calculate the specific heat of he tun but that seems like to much work. It just seems like you could be really accurate by letting the tun absorb the heat and warm up open the lid and let it lower to the strike temp and you should be right on the money.

Yup. Keep it simple man. Thats the best part about this hobby. Theres no 1 way to do anything. Take whatever you read as guidance, and find out whatever works best for you and your system.

[sonex]

what ever works for you, they all work. I use my 140f hot tap water to preheat the tun. then pour it out right before pouring in my strke water. no right or wrong way.

[Big_John]

I heat the strike water to the calculated temp in the MT then dump in the grain and stir quickly. I can usually hit my temps +/- one degree or so. I'm direct firing the mash tun, so this is easy for me to do and it's also easy to quickly adjust the temp if necessary which it seldom is.

[Rhoobarb]

I boil ~a gallon of water, dump it in and let it sit until my strike water is ready.

[ben the brewman]

i flip my mash tun over and put it on top of my kettle while im heating the mash water. it seems to work well for me.

[flyangler18]

It seems to me that it would make more sense to heat your strike water 5-10 degrees hotter than you calculate, pour it in, allow it to cool to your strike temp then start stirring in your grains.

Exactly what I do - works a mint. :k2:

[Lamppa]

i flip my mash tun over and put it on top of my kettle while im heating the mash water. it seems to work well for me.

Im doing research to work up to all grain in appx 3 more batches and this, to me, seems like the best way. No wasted hot water, no overheating and wasting the heat source.
I like this one.

[Lerxst]

Preheat? Nah, I just compensate on my strike temp.

[zoebisch01]

I suppose you could calculate the specific heat of he tun but that seems like to much work. It just seems like you could be really accurate by letting the tun absorb the heat and warm up open the lid and let it lower to the strike temp and you should be right on the money.

That's part of it. The main thing is the equations used for calculating strike temperature are not independent of tun temperature or grain temperature. I do add 5 gallons of warm tap water into my tun just to make sure it's around room temperature roughly. My basement where it is stored gets down to about 50 in the winter which is significant enough to throw off the calculations. An easier solution would be to have the tun at room temperature (close to high 60's low 70's) along with the grain. That would pretty much eliminate the needs for preheating of any sort...at least since on my spreadsheet it's all transparent. Not sure how other software works. Heck I think I may do this next time I brew, just move everything upstairs the night before. When it comes down to it, the temperature of the grain will make a far more significant impact on strike temperature than the tun due to thermal mass.

[vtchuck]

I boil ~a gallon of water, dump it in and let it sit until my strike water is ready.

Same here, just add a teapot of boiling water and slosh it around. I have a 10G RubberMaid round mash tun. Its usually pretty cold where I store it and my grain.... about 25 F today.

[UnderDogs]

If my strike is (just an example) 165 degrees I'll heat my water to 168 or 169 and throw it in. I close the lid and open in 5 min. later to see where the temp is at. Once it cools to 165 I throw my mash in.

[cheesefood]

Alton Brown says "always go dry on wet". I get best results when(unlike my last brew) I throw water in first (and remember that the bottom stuff nearest to the flame is hottest) and put grain on the water, then top with the bulk of the water. Not only does it preheat, it prevents compacting.

[Taz]

I preheat the Tun as stainless steel drops the the water temps from the HLT quite dramaticlly. I use this water to flush out any PBW that might be in the system.