[donsmitty]

Doing my first all-grain and was wondering how to to the mash-out step.  I'll be mashing in a 10 gal. cooler so in order to bring the temperature back up to @168 degrees should I add water to the wort or take some of the wort out and bring that up to a higher temp and add it back in to bring the total wort temp up?  Second, if the answer is to add water, then I would assume I subtract that from my sparge water? 

[Jimmy K]

Are you fly or batch sparging? You can add water - and yes you'd subtract that from your sparge water. If you are batch sparging, just drain and add hot batch sparge water.

[factory]

Are you fly or batch sparging? You can add water - and yes you'd subtract that from your sparge water. If you are batch sparging, just drain and add hot batch sparge water.

That's what I've been doing.  Draining the cooler and then adding ~185F water to bring the temp up to ~168-170 for the batch sparge.  Is that right?  Or should I use 168F water to batch sparge?

[Jimmy K]

That's what I've been doing.  Draining the cooler and then adding ~185F water to bring the temp up to ~168-170 for the batch sparge.  Is that right?  Or should I use 168F water to batch sparge?

That's about right. 168 degree water won't budget the grain temperature much. I've heard people going as high as 190.

[beersk]

Right. Depending on how large the grain bill, I typically use 180-185F sparge water. But it's been shown that it doesn't really matter if you sparge with 168F, 160F, 180F water, etc. I don't think it makes a difference. Just so long as you don't sparge too hot, as in getting the grain bed over 170F, and extract tannins.

[majorvices]

A lot of purist will resist this comment but you can absolutely skip the mash out step. It may slightly increase your overall efficiency and lower the lag time on the boil slightly but you aren't going to get much else benefit from it.

[denny]

A lot of purist will resist this comment but you can absolutely skip the mash out step. It may slightly increase your overall efficiency and lower the lag time on the boil slightly but you aren't going to get much else benefit from it.

Agreed, especially becasue most homebrewers don't really do a "mashout".  The only time I add water before the mash runoff is if I predict my mash and sparge runoffs will be more than a gal. different.  In that case I add enough water before mash runoff to pretty equalize them.

[donsmitty]

Are you fly or batch sparging? You can add water - and yes you'd subtract that from your sparge water. If you are batch sparging, just drain and add hot batch sparge water.

Yes, fly sparging.  Thanks for the info.

[donsmitty]

A lot of purist will resist this comment but you can absolutely skip the mash out step. It may slightly increase your overall efficiency and lower the lag time on the boil slightly but you aren't going to get much else benefit from it.

I think I read in John Palmer's book that he does not do a mash-out either.