first AG protein or sugar coagulation?

I did my first AG brew today. My strike water was supposed to be 150 I added it at 160 and it dropped to 140 somehow. Maybe I didn't wait long enough for the temp to equalize? Anyways so i added more boiling water to get to 150 and it went a little high like to 160 so i left the lid off the mash tun and it slowly dropped within range. I got about 10 gallons of wort doing a fly sparge and i boiled it down to 5 gallons. (took about 2 hours) . when i cooled the wort with my cossflow cooler i notice the hot wort in the brew kettle looked as if it had cooked egg whites in it. my question is what is it? i suspect protein coagulation or something, what caused it? and how Awful will this beer turn out. I can already see in the car boy that the bottom is a different color and looks a bit "chunky" so to speak. My OG was also off a bit instead of 1.060 it was 1.080.

wow....you might need to go back to extract brewing...but seriously there is too much going on here to know what you did/how this will turn out. My advice...you already made it, so just see how it ferments out.

BrewBoy19, you are right! What looks like egg whites or egg drop soup is actually break material and it is totally normal. As an all-grain brewer, you will see more of that material than you would as an extract brewer.

After chilling on your next brew, wait a little bit for stuff to settle in the kettle, siphon the wort from the brew kettle into the fermentor before pitching your yeast so you can leave the hot break, cold break and hop materials behind. It will make for a cleaner beer and will significantly decrease long-term flavor stability problems.

Definitely continue all-grain! Manage your fermentation temperatures and sanitation and your beer should be fine. Let us know how it turns out!

The egg white looking stuff is probably break material, which is normal. The stuff at the bottom of the carboy is probably break material and trub, which won't really hurt anything.

The real question is why did you collect so much wort? My concern would be that you extracted tannins by oversparging. Do you know what your water profile is? Did you check the gravity of the sparge runnings?

Edit: I guess I type slow, Hobnob beat me to it.

The "egg drop soup" looking stuff is probably hot break material. That's a good thing to see! That means you got a good hot break and that makes better beer. If you chilled quickly, you got a good cold break also, which tends to be bigger goobers especially you used something like Irish moss or whirlfloc. In any case, it sounds like it went pretty well for a first time.

I'm unsure of your volumes and recipe so I can't say if your OG was terrible or pretty good for your recipe but it sounds like you had a good day!

JuanMoore said:

The egg white looking stuff is probably break material, which is normal. The stuff at the bottom of the carboy is probably break material and trub, which won't really hurt anything.

The real question is why did you collect so much wort? My concern would be that you extracted tannins by oversparging. .

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The reason I did that was in the book "how to brew," it said to use 1 to 1.25 quarts per pound of grain to mash. I did this and it was about 4 gallons. Then it calls for 1/2 a gallon of sparge water per lb of grain. I did a fly sparge using a manifold mounted to the bottom of my mash tun lid. I thought the 1/2 gallon per pound was overkill or a typo but when i searched on here it said that was right but is meant for breweries who are trying to get max efficiency. I wanted to figure out how much more grain to use so I could sparge with far less water and just end up with about 6.5 gallons of wort, but to be honest the math formulas confuse me (i suck at math), I would do much better if I had someone experienced to explain and show me so I could pick it up easier. Since I couldn't get it right with the math I just did it the way "how to brew" said. it seemed to work, but I am worried about the tannins as well. I tasted some of the wort I set aside for taking a OG reading and it tasted bitter but not a bad bitter. After all I put 4 oz of hops in.

I would like some input on how you measure your mash temps. do you wait a few minutes after mixing the grains in? or take it immediately?

my temps shouldn't have dropped so far I mashed in at 165 which should have been overkill. and I pre heated my mash tun with 180 degree water for 5 minutes first.

BrewBoy19 said:

The reason I did that was in the book "how to brew," it said to use 1 to 1.25 quarts per pound of grain to mash. I did this and it was about 4 gallons. Then it calls for 1/2 a gallon of sparge water per lb of grain.

I would like some input on how you measure your mash temps. do you wait a few minutes after mixing the grains in? or take it immediately?

my temps shouldn't have dropped so far I mashed in at 165 which should have been overkill. and I pre heated my mash tun with 180 degree water for 5 minutes first.

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For next time, you only need to collect enough wort to reach your pre-boil volume. It takes several minutes of thorough stirring to get the grain properly "doughed in" and get the temperature stabilized and even throughout the mash tun. It sounds like you didn't stir long enough before taking a temp reading and there were still some hot and cool spots. All in all it sounds like your first all grain was a success, so just keep it up and it will get easier and easier every time.

JuanMoore said:

It sounds like you didn't stir long enough before taking a temp reading and there were still some hot and cool spots.

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i figured thats what it was after the fact. but my knee jerk reaction was oh now wtf. so i immediately added more hot water to bring it up higher.

should have just RDWHAHB.