[frochild]

I never thought of doing it this way ... is this how most people do it around here?

[tygo]

I've done a partial mash in the oven before.  Since my oven only goes down to 170F I heated it up on the stove to about 150F and held it there for half an hour or so before popping it into the oven until I was ready. I had the grains in a grain bag.

 

[zen_brew]

 The oven can be an excellent way to hold your temperatures if yours goes down to a stable 150 degrees. Many ovens don't go this low. Even if your's doesn't go that low you can still heat it up to the lowest setting turn it off and put your pot in there to help hold temp in a warmer than room temp environment. Many people also just heat their pot up to the desired temp, stick a lid on it and wrap it in some heavy towels to hold temperature. The temp is not quite as critical as in a full mash as you are getting most of your fermentables from your extract.

[Simon]

When I did partial mashes, that's the way I did it. I found I needed to use a digital multimeter on temp setting with a K-type thermocouple to check the oven temperature because, like others have mentioned, ovens typically don't go that low. I used to turn my oven on and off during the mash to keep the temp stable based on the DMM's reading.

I'd just get my mashing grains into a grain bag, put with water into a metal stockpot on the stove. Heat everything up and just pop it into the pre-heated oven. Using a DMM you can see just how much the temperature drops when you open the oven door!

Beats all other methods for maintaining a temperature for a partial mash.

[skyler]

I used to preheat to 200F (lowest it got) then would turn it off and wait 15-30 min before putting my grains in the oven. Mash temp never raised by more than 2-3 degrees.

[sailortodd]

What size pot are any of you mashing in when you do a partial mash in the oven? The biggest I have at this point is a 3 gallon, and was considering trying it out to benefit from some of the specialty grains that need to be mashed.

[tygo]

I've done it in 2.5 and 4 gallon pots depending on how much I want to mash.  3 gallons should be just fine.

[starraptor]

Let's see if this comes over

I took my second partial mash really seriously.  The first go around I had some heat loss at the end and ending up swinging too far the other way.  The beer turned out fine by I still wanted a better way to control the mash.  Then I discovered the Oven Method online.

Put all my grain in my big bag


Use daughter (aka BabyRaptor) to collect 7 qts of water


Heat said water to 165


While heating water set oven to 170


Put the grain and water into my kettle along with salts and chemicals, stir and check temperature then put the kettle in the oven for an hour


Do other stuff

The temperature held at 154 for 60 minutes


During which I heated my sprage water to 170


I used a metal steamer to hold the grain while I lauder


One litter at a time