Stupid ordering mistake... Any potential to salvage lost grains?

So my brew partner was in charge of ordering the supplies this go around and we had both written out the recipes we were going to try along with the ingredients that went with them (extract recipes BTW)... Anyway, he ordered all the stuff from Austin Homebrew Supplies, and this particular site gives you the option of putting different specialty grains or malts in the same bag if you plan on using those at the same time, such as if your recipe calls for 2 specialty grains, you can put them in the same grain "bill" while keeping other grains in another bag or "bill"... Well my dumby brew partner accidently put all 4 of our specialty grains in the same bag...

We went ahead and re-ordered the grains the correct waay to be shipped to us tomorrow, but we were wondering what the heck we are going todo with this big bag of mixed speciality grains... Is there any recipe that you guys could think of that might go good with this odd mish mash?

Here is what is in the bag:

0.75 lbs Carafoam
0.25 lbs Chocolate Malt

and

0.25 lbs English Extra Dark Crystal
0.25 lbs Belgian Biscuit Malt

Any ideas?

I'd order up some extra extract, steep 1/2 those grains, and see what you get. Mabye call it "One bag" ore something. Not sure what style you'd end up with, but it could be fun.

Seems like you could add them to a porter, brown or stout recipe.
Regards, GF.

plug it into a brew program like strangebrew or something, you should get color and a general idea what your out come will be. i agree with use half with a base malt and go for it.

Any suggestions as to what hops I might want to go with this?

I figured I would get some Dark Dried Malt Extract, about 5 pounds of it. I have no idea on the hops though, perhaps something woodsy or subtle?

I will prolly go with some sort of english ale yeast, but not sure... any suggestions?

Looks like you have the ingredients you could add to to make a nice Brown ale.

I made a beer with a very similar grain bill (minus the carafoam) and I used 6 row, it was an all grain 1 gallon personal recipe. For hops I used East Kent Goldings and Willamette. Unfortunately I did not do it correct (begginers mistake here) and thought that if I added more water I would get a little more beer... needless to say it came out wattery so I cannot describe a finished product but the aroma and tate of the wort was delicous none the less.

suds_zville said:

Looks like you have the ingredients you could add to to make a nice Brown ale.

Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking! I'd steep those grains, and use the extract you have to make a nice beer.

Like this:


0.75 lbs Carafoam
0.25 lbs Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs English Extra Dark Crystal
0.25 lbs Belgian Biscuit Malt

Steep. Then bring to a boil and add 2.5 pounds of extract.

Hops:
1 oz willamette at 60 minutes (or EKG or fuggles)
.5 oz willamette at 5 minutes (or EKG or fuggles)

At flame out at the second 2.5 pounds of extract.

That's a lower gravity English bitter, and I think it'll be really good actually!

What would be the effect if I steeped all the grains as opposed to half of them? Is this going to get me a stronger flavor, deeper color, fuller body, or what?

So I have an extra 4.75 pounds of Extra light LME... What if I did the following:

Steeped full 2 pounds of grains

Boiled 4.75 pounds of extra light LME

.75 oz EKG at 60 minutes

.25 oz Williamette at 5 minutes

Hell, while I am at it I might as well do some further experimenting. What you guys think about racking to a secondary fermenter after a week so that I can make some interesting additions. Anyone think some toasted oak chips or perhaps some coffee? We have 3 fermenters so we may as well use them, I don't see why we can't get a 3rd batch going shortly after we get these bad boys going (a week or two). Might as well make it a 100 experimental batch.

+1 on Williamette, that would make for a delicious Bitter!

Those grains would be ok for anything like a brown ale, porter, (Belgian) stout, dubbel, quad, bitter, etc. You could play with hops or yeast strains and pull that in any of those directions.