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To make (alchoholic) beer, you need some sort of sugar that yeast will eat and produce alcohol. Barley has a lot of starch content that needs to be broken down into simpl(er) sugars. One of the popular methods to do this is to cook grains in water at a certain temp for a certain time.
Months ago back in California, I was “cooking” (called mashing) grains in my cooler at 150 degrees. During the mash, I decided to fiddle with the cooler’s spigot- causing the spigot to come off and spill hot grain water all over my kitchen water.
Good lesson: It doesn’t matter which; Beer or water, at 150 degrees you can’t plug the hole with your finger!