JD, The longer you Mash the Lower the Ph goes, due to the Grains darkness.

If you keep the Mash Temperature below 170F the tannins won't come out, no matter what Ph there is....Think Tea

I use the OLD German Mash way, Add the grains to ALL the water AT ambient Temperature.

Then, heat the Kettle At 2F/1C every 2 minutes until 140F/60C.

Then, start a 2 hour timer and the set the heat to slowly raise the temperature to 64C to 68C and hold that temperature until the time runs out.

Then Go up to Mashout, Pull the bag, and SQUEEZE the bag and go to Boil.

This Long process takes 3.75 hours. I use Groats(raw oats) or Un-malted wheat or Unmalted Barley, and need all the Mash steps!

johnny_dove wrote:Better keep it under 170 not worth a little extra efficiency to dunk too hot. Do you dunk or simply mash with total needed water? Grain to liquid ratio matters?

Hi there johnny and welcome to the forum .

Here's a few thoughts for you...

1. pH of a full-volume mash is very easy to adjust but don't worry about that at this stage. Just stick to the 170-172 F (76 -78 C) mentioned above for now and you shouldn't have any problems.

2. If you can full-volume mash, you should do it. There are many reasons for this. The main one is that there is no downside in quality. A second one is that sparging will not improve your mash efficiency based on side by side identical brews we have done to date. So, lots of hassle and work for nothing.

In a full-volume brew, you are actually mashing and 'sparging' at the same time. In BIAB, there are very few situations where an 'active' sparge (requiring usually two extra vessels) would be a good idea.

I've written a fair bit on this in the last two or three months (probably years as well ) that I think might be of help to you. Often I link past posts but it takes a while and I'm being lazy tonight .

The way I find my posts is as follows...

1. I always use the Advanced Search.
2. In this particular case, try a few different searches with the keywords, 'washing machine', 'maxi-BIAB', 'efficiency', and maybe 'rinsing'.
3. Put my name in the author field.
4. At the bottom right, set it to a 1000 characters per post as I always write too much.

Just had a quick look then and the first result using 'washing machine' will take you to this post.

That's probably not a bad one for your question as to whether to full-volume mash or not.


PP