I forgot to add my oats!

So I am brewing a Wit right now, and I completely forgot to add the oats to the mash!

I realized it with about 25 minutes left in the mash, so I just dumped'em in, gave it a good stir, and reset the timer...will this late addition screw up my brew?

My MLT keeps the temps within a degree over an hour, but I know I lost some heat when I stirred the oats in

Anyhow, any comments are welcome.

I would have done the same thing without hesitation.

So in total you mashed for about an hour and a half? Sounds fine to me - maybe you'll get a little extra attenuation due to the extra conversion time but it's not like it'll ruin the beer.

without the oats, did you get within the proper heat range for the enzymes?

Shinglejohn said:

without the oats, did you get within the proper heat range for the enzymes?

Click to expand...

Well I was shooting for 148, and after mash-in and letting it rest for about 10 minutes, I read the temp at about 145, so I added a gallon of 180+ degree water which brought the temps up to the 148.

I didn't check the temp when I stirred the oats in because I was trying to ddo it quickly, and with as little heat loss as possible, but when checked the temp before vorlauf, it was about 145.

I also didn't have the boil-off rate that I normally would, I'm gonna chalk that up to the cooler temperatures we've had here the past couple days.

Anyhow, my OG was supposed to be 1056, but I ended up with about 1051. However, I was supposed to be left with 6 gallons and it was more like 7.25?

This is the first brew I haven't hit my gravity numbers dead on out of the last few times I've brewed, having said that I did take a 4 month break because of school.

Regardless, I wanted this to be my get-back-into-the-swing-of-things brew, because I plan on brewing 3 more brews after the first of January.

Nonetheless, it is fermenting away happily.