Lost power while brewing

Hey all,

Com Ed sucks. Just lost power in our neighborhood while brewing a batch. I have an all electric system. I'm about 50 min into the mash, how long can the wort sit there with the grains before the beer will be ruined?

 

Don? You should be ok for a little while, but I wouldn't go over 3 hours.

 

Shouldn't be a problem once it's converted its converted
I mean until it starts to grow mold that is

 

Can you strain the wort out of the your system w/o power (via gravity) and into a fermenter bucket? If so, I'd do that, seal it up and do the boil once you get power back. At 50 min, you're very likely to have gotten full conversion.

 

If you had a reasonably decent crush on your grains you conversion was over before half an hour had passed. At 50 minutes you just drain and sparge.

 

Don? no, I'm not don

Thanks for the reassurance guys. Power just came back so I was only down for around an hour (they originally told me it could take all day.) So I'm not that concerned anymore. Mash temp dropped from 150 to 127, and I'm just going straight to mashout now.

4 years brewing with all electric and this is the first time I've encountered an outage while brewing!

 

Oh, you're fly sparging?

I hate to say it but the point of mash out is to stop the conversion when you have the right mix of fermentable and unfermentable sugars. With the time and temperature drop, you'll either have no action performed by the mash out because the beta amylase has converted all the long chain sugars to fermentables or your mash was hot enough long enough to denature the beta amylase. In other words, the mash out is worthless now and you might as well drain, sparge, and get on with the boil.

 

Happened to me once on a double decocted Weizenbock. What a PITA. There is enough going on on brew day that having to go refuel the genny periodically is not a welcomed extra task.

 

I've done a 3+ hour mash before, no problem. But also, I've left the drained mash in the pot overnight and it's already getting sour by the next morning. So, somewhere in there the lacto starts getting busy.

Glad it all worked out for you. Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in there.

 

I thought you weren't, but right before I read your post my friend Don called the shop and asked if we had power because his went out in the middle of his mash. Also being from Chicago, I found it eerily similar. Hope the rest of your brew day went well

 

Yeah, I realize my location says "chicago" but I'm actually in libertyville.

Wort seemed to taste fine going into the fermenter, so I don't think the loss of power messed anything up.

As far as the mashout not doing anything... yeah, I figured as much. I fly sparge though so I figured I'd just go ahead and heat up the mash on it's way into the BK.

 

Ok, that's even weirder. Both Don and I live in Libertyville. I'm one of the guys that runs Perfect Brewing Supply, so odds are good we've met at some point. Cheers!