First partial mash, made an oops

So there I was brewing my first partial mash and things were going pretty well. I mashed for 60 minutes my grains, recirculated the wort a bit, batch sparged, then got my boil started. About half way through the boil I was moving stuff around on the counter and realized that I had separated my grains into two bags from the LHBS. So I mashed 2lbs Pilsner and 1 lb Vienna but neglected my 1/2 lb wheat and 1/2 lb CaraPils. So I stopped the boil, heated up some strike water to the right temp, and started mashing the rest of the grains. Wheat is a base malt right... and CaraPils has Pilsner which is a base right? So will this turn out alright if I add it back to the brewpot after half an hour of mashing and continue my boil on schedule?

Live and learn! :cross:

I've only done one PM, but I would say that you're probably OK

I will go with the standard advice around here and say, don't throw it out...see it to the end and then when someone else comes around with the same question you can say "I did the same thing and it turned out great/OK/gawdawful"

As long as everything got in there, you should be fine.


Dan

well I hate to tell you you, but you wasted an hour. When you mash wheat and a heavily modified malt such as carapils you get very little fermentables, due to lack of enzymes. If you would have mashed it all at the same time you would have got fermentables.

But alone, wheat and carapils lack the diastatic enzymes to convert starch to sugar, so faced with that situation I would have steeped the wheat and carapils and saved myself some time.

Oh well. It was wheat malt and not just plain old wheat does that make any difference?

I missed my target OG by about 6 points so it could have been worse. It'll just be a little bit lighter than I wanted.

No, its just a wheat thing.....actually its alot of grains....that is why you will find most all grain or partial mash recipes to contain a base malt (pale, pilsner, maris otter, etc.) these have alot of these enzymes present and can utilize the starches in all grains added to the mash. At any rate.....what you did will not affect the taste of the beer at all, you will just miss out on a little booze. Either way you will have a great beer.

If it was malted wheat it would have enough enzymatic power to convert; malted wheat is a base malt like 2-row barley. Carapils doesn't need to convert as it's already had its starches turned to caramelized sugar, so a simple steeping in hot water will extract the sugars from it.