Boiling grains

Before everyone cringes, I know NOW, that I should never have grains in boiling water due to the release of tannons.

Before I learned that lesson, I was doing a partial mash and when the water hit boil I added my Stout extract and "tea-bag" of grains, and added my hops at 60", 30", 5". Pull grains, Cool down, dump in fermenter, pitch yeast.

My big question is, should I even bother bottling this beer, or will the fact that it's a stout be a bit forgiving?

Thanks

Bad beer is better than no beer! I know I am a noob around here and you might get different opinions but I say if you don't have another recipe waiting to go bottle it and see what happens.

Who told you to boil your grain for an hour?

Never toss a batch before it's finished. It may have a lot of tannins and be terrible but because it's a stout, it might hide the flavors good enough to be ok.

Grains get boiled in a decoction. Just sayin'.

northernlad said:

Who told you to boil your grain for an hour?

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Nobody actually told me to boil grains, it was a case of reading so much information that it all blended together in one huge brain-fart.

OPKUTech said:

Nobody actually told me to boil grains, it was a case of reading so much information that it all blended together in one huge brain-fart.

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you want to steep the grain not boil it.

It's better not to boil the grains, but I've done it and the beer turned out fine.

-a.

Bottle it, Drink it, then let us know how it is.

what was in the specialty grain bag.. roasted barley, flaked barley, flaked oats, black malt?

OLDBREW said:

what was in the specialty grain bag.. roasted barley, flaked barley, flaked oats, black malt?

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I honestly don't remember what he put in there. He just said things like "do you want a dry or sweet stout?" dry "ok, you need (this)".

The bag ended up about as big as a cantaloupe mellon and there was 3 different grains.

Sorry I dont have more info.

It should be a drinkable brew. Might need a little time to mellow out some.
next time just keep the grains at mash temps

Any base grains that you had in there that would need to be mashed would be denatured by the boiling water before it had a chance to convert, so your fermentability will be less than what you want.
Try it now that you've gone this far, and try it when it is finished fermenting. You never know.

I found my grain list:

1' Maris Otter
.5' Medium Crystal
.5' Roasted Barley
1' Chocolate

I appreciate all the advice and well wishes

In reading another thread, I remembered who "told" me to boil the grains...Alton Brown on "Good Eats"

OPKUTech said:

Before everyone cringes, I know NOW, that I should never have grains in boiling water due to the release of tannons.

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Really it all depends on the grains. It's not easy to get the tannins out.
In the instance of mashing you might need an 8 hour mash to leach the tannins out.

The process of boiling some of your grains is called decoction.
It is widely used by a whole lot of people for extracting hard to get at starches.
Lots of folks use decoction brewing for two row malts. the idea is to swipe some (a couple pounds tops) of the malt from the Mash Tun, boil it for a bit and return it to the mash tun to allow the enzymes to have access to the starches.

It works for starches that are difficult to get into solution. The heat breaks 'em down and makes 'em soluble. Then ya gotta watch your temps when you re introduce 'em to the Mash 'cause you don't want to heat the mash past on say 151F tops.

boo boo said:

Try it now that you've gone this far, and try it when it is finished fermenting. You never know.

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Well, since today is the 2nd day of m 3 day FG check, I decided to boil a cup to sterilize and dipped it into my beer for a taste sample. Now I feel beter about everything and cant wait to try it in about a month....Mmmmm!!!

For anyone who might ask, OG at 73*f was 1.048. Yesterday was at 1.024 and today was at 1.022. I'll wat till next weekend to bottle.

woah.... I would wait a bit longer than that to bottle. give it a week or 2 once it reaches its FG.

Our first batch was a stout, which we overzealously boiled the heck out of. So much for reading directions. We also added coffee grounds to the primary, more out of eagerness than brains.

After doing everything wrong, it turned out to be one our best batches so far. More like a coffee stout, it had great mouth-feel, terrific taste, and a decent alcohol content. We plan on trying to duplicate that mistake again soon.

Never throw away a batch. You really never know, as Forrest Gump said, "What you're gonna get."