Oversparge. :(

As I mentioned in my "Scum (in the) bucket" thread, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and stir my mash before I started sparging. Turned out to be a bad idea because my false bottom clogged up and I was forced to perform some desperate measures.

I filtered all the grain out of the mess with a colander and set it aside, then I went from bucket to bucket a few times with the sparge water (at this point wort not quite finished) while running the liquid through a couple of sieves to remove the husks and junk that was clogging the false bottom.

I rinsed out my mash tun and returned the "sparge water" - if that's what it was at that point - to the correct temperature. I returned the grain back to the mash tun in an attempt to recreate the filtration provided by the grain bed, and ran the liquid through my HLT.

Crossing my fingers, I was relieved to see that the liquid was running through the mash tun and it appeared that the day was saved.

The question is, how is this mistake going to affect the outcome of my brew? Thanks again!

I'm not sure you actually oversparged here at all, but I'm not totally clear on what happened. You don't mention anything about conversion or efficiency. So long as all the disruptions didn't impact those two factors, I don't expect you'd see any particular downside. Three or four years ago, everybody would have been worried about HSA, but that's largely a moot issue these days.

What's HSA? I was just concerned about the amount of time that the grain soaked and if the lowered temperature could affect it in any way.

Conversion and efficiency isn't something I know much about. I guess my skill level hasn't reached that point yet, but this conversation has an eyebrow raised and I'll probably be looking into it more. Thanks!

Cheers!!

bmantzey said:

What's HSA? I was just concerned about the amount of time that the grain soaked and if the lowered temperature could affect it in any way.

Conversion and efficiency isn't something I know much about. I guess my skill level hasn't reached that point yet, but this conversation has an eyebrow raised and I'll probably be looking into it more. Thanks!

Cheers!!

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Oversparging usually refers to excess water. The temperature and times issues coudl potentially be significant, but it will be hard to know without calculating your efficiency. There are plenty of good threads around to help you know how to do that. Realistically, though, so long as you held temperature properly for the first 30 or so minutes, what happened after that is much less important.

Edit: Hot Side Aeration is a boogey man in homebrewing. It's not clear that it even exists, but it is basically a concern about oxygenating the wort while above a particular temperature. It's a non-issue.

Okay, thanks a bunch! I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope it turns out.