Forgot false bottom

Hello,
I brewed over the weekend and as soon as I added my grain and strike water I realized I never added my false bottom to mash tun. I quickly dumped the grains and water into my brew kettle, added the false bottom, and added the grains/water back to mash tun.

Anyone else have a similar experience? Any reason why the beer won't turn out ok?

Thanks

I don't think it should make any difference at all.

Only thing I can think of is temperature loss in your mash from the transferring. If you were able to maintain your mash temp, no problem.

My hose connecting my false bottom and ball valve broke off once. I needed to add some DME to hit my desired SG. Not a big deal at all.

Cant help you but this reminds me a situation i was in years ago. I was rebrewing an imperial stout for MCAB and got a stuck mash that would not budge. I tried stirring up the mash, adding rice hulls, blowing air through the recirc line - nothing worked. I had now been mashing for over 90 minutes at this point. Then I realized the handle on the ball valve was red. (I use orange igloo coolers for my LT and MLT, the difference being my MLT had a blue handle.) I couldn't believe my stupidity and dumped the mash into the MLT and started recirculating. STUCK MASH AGAIN.

This was about 6 or 7 years ago and I still clearly recall how angry and frustrated I was and how close I was to chucking the mash, mash tun and all, into he woods. But I persevered and completed the brew day.

Ended up getting good efficiency and wicked high attenuation - I think the beer finished at 1.010 where it had previously finished at 1.030. Beer wasn't great and I ended up dumping it.

turkeygecko said:

Only thing I can think of is temperature loss in your mash from the transferring. If you were able to maintain your mash temp, no problem.

Click to expand...

I had to add some hot water as I was lower than desired after transferring back to mash tun.

turkeygecko said:

Only thing I can think of is temperature loss in your mash from the transferring. If you were able to maintain your mash temp, no problem.

Click to expand...

Had to add hot water as I was lower than desired after transferring back to the mash tun.

This has happened to me more than once and like others have said it's just adding some hot water to make sure you are at your mash temperature. I have not had any issues with any of the beers in which this happened.

In the Blichmann mash tun, there is a washer that you need to thread over the dip tube then drop on top of the false bottom to cover the gap where the dip tube goes through the false bottom. I've forgotten to drop that washer down. Couldn't for the life of me figure out why so much grain was recirculating. Really lucky I didn't completely clog the herms coil.

My mash tun is a square cooler, and I use a bazooka tube threaded onto a ball lock valve. At last count I've forgotten to install the bazooka FOUR TIMES. I tend to leave it out to air dry when I'm done cleaning the tun and therefore it's not where it's supposed to be. This last time I left it in the tun (loose) so I won't forget it. Each time I had to add some hot water to get the mash back up to temp and the beers all turned out fine.

The beer turned out delicious, so everyone was right, no negative impacts!

jdhasse said:

Hello,
I brewed over the weekend and as soon as I added my grain and strike water I realized I never added my false bottom to mash tun

Click to expand...

This exact thing happened me last night.... my only issue was I use a HERMS system and I ended up clogging a ball valve, which starved a pump, which I didn't realise...

I'll add it to evergrowing list of mistakes

Glad the beer was delicious!

If it makes you feel any better, one time when I was doing Brew In A Bag....I FORGOT THE BAG.