Can I restart my mash

[MikeB.]

Morning all,

I’m brewing a Saison this morning which should be mashing at 66 degrees.

My temperature profile whilst mashing has been terrible and dropped right off to the low 50s (I think I may’ve accidentally turned the heat off)

Unfortunately I didn’t notice as I was busy elsewhere.

My question is what will the impact be and can I just restart the mash step at the correct temp?

Thanks

 

[Sadfield]

I wouldn't worry about it, just continue your mash for the desired time as if you'd kept it at 65°C. It will still have been in a good temperature range for beta amylase.

 

[MikeB.]

@Sadfield thanks, I’ll continue and try and remember to pay more attention next time

 

[Jim Brewster]

A low mash temp for a Saison isn't necessarily a bad thing. Looks as though it was at 65 for a few minutes anyway? I've heard the first 15 or so minutes is the crucial part for beta amylase before they denature. Mash out as usual to get the alpha amylase going if there's anything left to convert and I would think it'll be fine.

 

[MikeB.]

It had a few minutes at 65, luckily it didn't crash particularly fast. I did mash out at 75, so hopefully this will rectify or at least minimised any issues

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

Taste the wort if you don't have iodine, if it tastes sweet you should have achieved conversion.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

You won’t have done any harm: being too low in temp isn’t anything like as bad as being too high: just take it back up to 65°C and go again from the start.
I’d recommend doing a mash out at 75°C at the end though :-)

 

[MikeB.]

I mashed out at 75 deg c. I checked OG going into the fermenter and hit my desired numbers so looks like I didn’t do any damage. All I can do now is wait

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I mashed out at 75 deg c. I checked OG going into the fermenter and hit my desired numbers so looks like I didn’t do any damage. All I can do now is wait

I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Just for interest, if the mash gets too hot (in contrast to what happened to you) then you can get lots of alpha amylase activity but not much beta amylase. This produces lots of sugars but very few of them simple enough to be metabolised by the yeast - so you get a good OG but a poor attenuation.