Thermometer recommendations

While mash temps vary throughout the tun, you must have some way of deciding what the final temp "is". If you don't like the way the beer comes out wouldn't you try to get the temperatures (all of them) higher or lower (all of them, on some sort of visual average based on your system)?

 

I guess what I'm saying is that when I hear the advice given someone to raise the mash temperature by one degree or so, for instance, to get more body in the wort, I tend to want to roll eyeballs. That type of control just isn't possible outside of a laboratory.

 

What I do is I measure water temp in one location in the mash tun. I know it is spatially variable, but I assume that the variability is more or less constant. Unless I appear to have made a gross error, I never bother trying to correct a temp if I miss my target. If the beer turns out too dry or too unfermentable, that is a data point I use when determining my strike temp and mash target for the next batch.

 

My experience (with cooler type mash tuns) has been that temp variation has as much or more to do with the mash viscosity that happens to exist at the location at the time the temp is measured, rather than the location itself. (Imagine doughballs at one exteme and pure water at the other...these don't really exist in the mash, but illustrate the idea conceptually.) The better mixed, the smaller the differences, but there are always some differences. That's why I started averaging.

 

Yeah. Doughballs would create a temp anomaly. I usually take care of them with one good stir and then close the lid. But there have been a couple or so times where I relalized as I was getting ready to mashout or sparge that I missed a doughball. In those circumstances, I restir, cross my fingers, and tack on 20 min to the mash.