This weekends adventures in mashing really bugged me.
I've got a digital therm on a rope, and a normal probe therm that comes with a turkey fryer.
The digital is a mess lately. Granted, I know there are going to be hotspots in my mash kettle, given the copper manifold, but even still, I was afraid of using the stupid thing. Basically, I'd dump it in three spots, one near the edge, one dead center, and one halfway between. The stupid thing would jump from 149 to 160
in the same spot, and then settle at 151...was making me panic.
Same thing with the chilling. I try and put it near the middle, but the wort is definately cooler at the bottom, somewhere the probe can't reach without ruining it. So I'm pretty sure I'm over chilling the wort (took me over an hour to make the temp displayed hit 80 last night....)
Someone's got to have a better system than this to make sure their temp is right. Im about to burn that digital temp and just go by whatever's on the probe instead, which may be off a few degrees and slower, but somehow I trust it more....