Forgot to heat sparge water! What to expect?

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benzy4010

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With the massive storm on the east coast I was trying to finish two beers before the natural disasters about to happen I forgot to heat sparge I just dumped the water into the mashtun what's this gonna do probably lower efficiency?
 
And added the hops at flameout instead of at 60 minutes. To much of a hurry I guess. Any idea what this is gonna be like now haha?
 
The things we do for beer! I have never done either of these before, so take my opinion as you will. I think you're correct that not heating the sparge water will reduce your efficiency because the sugars are less soluble in colder water. Not a big deal. As for the hops, Your going to get a lot of nose, but very little bittering out of them. If you still have the hops, you can try to make a "hop tea" and add that back to the primary. What kind of beer is it? If it's pretty light, you might get away with this, but for a darker, malty beer I think it would be too far off balance without utilizing the AA more.
 
Like hearing that. The hop screw up sucks though nut its such a lighter beer probably won't ruin it to bad. The color is a bit darker than I wanted
 
Yeah, the hops change will affect the flavor far more than the sparge problem.

You might consider working from checklists in the future so that important steps aren't forgotten. There are so many little details to remember when brewing that it is nearly impossible to remember everything. I know I couldn't do it without my recipe-specific brew day printouts.
 
If it's a belgian wit, did you have any other bittering additions (orange peel or coriander) that went in early? I'd mainly be concerned about not enough bittering to offset the malt sweetness, though this won't be as big a problem with this style as it might be for others. Fortunately, it will be beer. And, more importantly, I imagine it will be drinkable bordering on good.
 
I always make a check list but we just move into this house ( 3 days ago) and its in a box
 
image-3486316525.jpg

This is the beer except the hop additions I added the tettnanger at flameout not @60 minutes
 
I cold sparge with room temp water from time to time. My efficiency doesn't change either way. The sugars will rinse out with hot or cold water. The sugars are already dissolved by the time you sparge. The only real reason brewers use hot water to sparge (besides for stopping conversion) is to get the wort as close to boiling temp as possible without going over 170F, but if you have a good burner it doesn't take that much longer to get to a boil.

As far as the hops go, you could always use some DME and make a concentrated hop tea (boil for an hour) and add it to the fermenter. It's not ideal, but you could remove a cup or two of wort to make room for it if you're already tapped out.

JMHO YMMV!
 
Get the Brewpal app for the ipod/ipad/iphone. I have it and really like it. It has mash and boil timers that remind you of important events such as hop additions.
 

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