I left my grains in the fermenter

I ended up having only 6 oz's of grain in my extract brew, but I couldn't find my muslin bag anywhere, so I made the decision to just throw them in.

Likely there will be a slight astringency, but due to the low actual amount I'm not worried so much. I am worried that letting the husks sit in there for the multiple weeks of fermentation may give some interesting (ahem) results.

Should I let it go and not worry or should I attempt to filter them out?

If you added the yeast already I think it's too late.

You could have filtered thru a strainer when you went from the boil kettle to the primary...

Hard to say. I'm guessing the specialty grain was in for the boil? It should be interesting to see what you get as an end result.

In any case, you will make beer.

You could just rack to a secondary fermenter and leave the grains in the primary, but the damage was already done when you boiled those grains and husks along with your wort.

It's only 6oz of grain, so you might as well just let it go and see how it turns out.


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Maybe I misread that. Did you add the grains to the kettle to steep and then boil or did you throw them directly into the fermenter?


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Did you dry hop with grain?

I put steeped the grains, and then carried them through all the way to primary.

I tried to take a swig of it to taste, but the bottom is very thick slurry of yeast, hops, and grains - I'll try to siphon off a bit off the top tomorrow to see if I can notice any astringency

Oh. Yeah that's weird. Maybe it'll work out.

Maybe I'll revolutionize the field

So it is very astringent and bitter. Most of the bitter is from the hops, but there is definitely a tannin-quality to it. It tastes great aside from this though so I really want to rescue it.

The first thing I did was add 2 grams/gallon of gelatin finings. This is to remove tannic acids, as is done in red wines which have too much tannin. I have yet to taste it.

My second problem however is I have nearly a gallon of sludge on the bottom, what I assume is a very loose lees mixed with the now-boiled grains, which have essentially disintegrated. I'm not sure if it's going to compact down as it's been sitting at this level for about 1.5 weeks.

Does anyone have any idea of a method to compact this stuff down, at least below my spigot level, so I can transfer it?

The yeast is still bubbling every 5 minutes or so, so perhaps I just need to wait it out. It's been going for 3 weeks now and still somewhat active. (OG was ~1.087)

If you can cold crash it, that should help with getting everything settled out. You'd need to wait until fermentation is definitely done, though.

ktblunden said:

If you can cold crash it, that should help with getting everything settled out. You'd need to wait until fermentation is definitely done, though.

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Ahh yes! I spaced this technique. Thanks I wouldn't have remembered on my own.

WTF?

You are straight up lazy and go against basic brewing knowledge...

Now you are making the effort to add gelatin and cold crash??

:SMH:

In case it doesn't settle well, you could tilt the fermenter to encourage the trub to settle to the side away from the spigot.

Xpertskir said:

WTF?

You are straight up lazy and go against basic brewing knowledge...

Now you are making the effort to add gelatin and cold crash??

:SMH:

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Whoawhoa whoa. I'm not lazy. I only had 6 oz of grains, and I looked everywhere but could not find my muslin bag. I don't have a car so another trip to the brew store would have taken days. I don't appreciate the comment at all and nothing constructive came from it. In the future please be a bit more considerate...

ncbrewer said:

In case it doesn't settle well, you could tilt the fermenter to encourage the trub to settle to the side away from the spigot.

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Also a practical idea. Thanks

IJesusChrist said:

Whoawhoa whoa. I'm not lazy. I only had 6 oz of grains, and I looked everywhere but could not find my muslin bag. I don't have a car so another trip to the brew store would have taken days. I don't appreciate the comment at all and nothing constructive came from it. In the future please be a bit more considerate...

Click to expand...

Amen, Brother.

Xpertskir said:

WTF?

You are straight up lazy and go against basic brewing knowledge...

Now you are making the effort to add gelatin and cold crash??

:SMH:

Click to expand...

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!

I understand some whiskey makers ferment on the grain.

I would wait until fermentation is over, add gelatin, and cold crash. The trub will be a very tight cake due to the gelatin congealing. I do agree with a previous poster about tilting the fermenter away from the spigot before cold crashing. If you gently rack off the wort, the trub may never move at all. I have done the tilt away method with good results. The amount of trub I get these days is very minimal, I get my BK as cold as I can w/o ice, wait a couple of hours, and rack the wort over the top of two paint filters stacked on top of each other. I once tried putting the filters one inside the other, and as soon as I went to remove them, the fabric stretched and 80% of the trub got back in. I don't understand why more people don't rack onto some kind of screen or filter media, as there is so much less crap to try to cold crash out of the wort.

C-Rider said:

I understand some whiskey makers ferment on the grain.

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Yeah, but that's because they don't really care about tannins since distillation takes care of them.

I would just rack into a clean carboy before fining. Even if your spigot picks up some trub most of it will be left behind.