mini mash/accidently boiled grains!!! worth saving?

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MasterDood

MasterDood

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Okay so for me this is my second brew, my first one went well. Im doing mini-mashs (3lbs grain/ 4lbs extract for a 5 gal). During the grain soaking, I let a friend take over because I had no choice and had to leave to give someone a ride. When I came back a half hour later and opened the lid, the water was BOILING!
I immediately shut off heat and moved the pot off of the burner. The grains may well have been at temps over 170 for up to 30 minutes! I freaked out, scolded my pal, but finished the batch and pitched the yeast. Its been three days, the batch smells great, but im sure smell isn't everything. After perusing the forums I'm now concerned I may have extracted too many tannins and the beer will taste awful. My hope is that since the actual grains are only account for half of the batch it may yet be saved and worth keeping. And also of course that the grains were only scalded for a part of the time.
Id love to hear your advice and what you think I should do. This kit came from Austin Home Brew Boddingtons Pub Ale clone.
I figured if this happened in an all grain scenario, it would be trash so hopefully since its partial, I wont have to throw it out! Any thoughts or advice?
Thank you!
 
Yeah at this point you aren't going to lose anything. Just let it ride and taste it after it's had time to properly condition. Worst case scenario is you have drinkable beer that dries your tongue out after you drink some of it. Hey, at least it will be beer!
 
Newbeerguy said:
I wouldn't dump it without tasting it, thats for sure. I say let it ferment out and see what you got.
Click to expand...

+1 to this. You'll likely have some tannins but it may end up being very drinkable anyway. You won't know unitl it's done, so just wait it out and see.
 
Please, get the words "Dumping Beer" out of your mindset.....

Since nothing pathogenic can grow in beer, that's a really silly worry and would be a waste of potentially excellent beer.

That's why I've been collecting success stories like this, to hopefully teach you overly worried new brewers the folly of your ways.


Most of the time a new brewer (and it's usually new brewers who do) is because they think something like that, though, and are actually tasting their beer usually when it is really green. Or they make a mistake and because of all the worst case scenarions they've come upon in books, they dump it thinking in their naievty that their beer will instantly go bad.

I wrote this awhile ago...it should be committed to memory...

You don't dump your beer, for making a minor little mistake. Your beer is hardier than that.

And you don't dump something because you think it's going to turn out bad. You only dump a beer that you KNOW is bad, and you give it at least a couple of months in the bottle before you even make THAT decision.

Read theses two threads that were compiled for nervous new brewers to realize that your beers are not a weak baby that is going to die if you look at it wrong.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

Our beer is really resilient despite the boneheaded things we do to it. And even if something appears to be wrong, often time and the yeasties go along way to correct itself.

And if everyone dumped their beer just because of a common thing like an airlock suckback, no one would be brewing. We ALL have had sanitizer from our airlock get into our beer at one time or another. There's a ton of panic threads on here about that, and the answer is always the same, RELAX.

I think about it in terms of my time and money, I'm not going to dump 30 or more dollars worth of ingredients, 6 hours of brewing time, and at least 2 months from yeast pitch to cracking the first bottle, on what could be a minor mistake (that may not even harm the beer anyway,) until I have exhausted all probability that the beer won't improve. And even then that means at least walking away from the bottles for maybe 6 months or more.

And so far I have never beer wrong.

After all these years of brewing I still haven't had a dumper.

And I've made some big mistakes.

But I have never had a beer that wasn't at least palatable, after all that time.

They may have not been stellar beers, but they were still better than BMC or Skunky Beers in green bottles that people actually pay money for.

So just read those threads and next time, relax, and give your beer a chance to prove how strong it really is.

:mug:
Click to expand...


Read these stories while you relax...And especially erase the words "Should I dump this" from your thought process....
 
As long as your pH was in the proper range, you won't have extracted any tannins. What you did was sort of the equivalent of doing a decoction. Heck I made a beer where I boiled ALL of my grains (9 lbs worth) and then drained to a fermenter. No tannins in the final product.
 
Thank you all for very quick replies. That was pretty much what I expected to hear, but for some reason its always comforting to hear it. I like your mentality. I had been craving to make this batch for several months and have a boddingtons clone. I think I might still want to redo this batch and do it correctly so I can rely on having a batch that tastes as intended. The beauty of what you have pointed out to me makes me more excited as I don't know how its going to turn out. Again. Thanks for your replies.
 
pjj2ba said:
As long as your pH was in the proper range, you won't have extracted any tannins. What you did was sort of the equivalent of doing a decoction. Heck I made a beer where I boiled ALL of my grains (9 lbs worth) and then drained to a fermenter. No tannins in the final product.
Click to expand...

I was just going to bring up the decoction analogy as well. I just did that in my Barleywine, boiled up several gallons of my grains and wort and added it back to my mash after boiling for 15-20 minutes. As we neared the end of the 60 minute mash I pulled out a couple gallons of mash and brought it to a boil for about 10 minutes as a decoction which we then used as a mashout. The stuff was like porridge. (It was so think that it was difficult to clean the pitched I had used to get it out of the tun hours later, it was like a thick sugar glaze.)

59448_434057434066_620469066_5122018_4799406_n.jpg
 

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