Didn't get all of my crushed grains added to the mash...now what?

[msa8967]

Trying to do a 12 gallon recipe using 24 lbs of grain. After crushing the grain I had to separte it into 2 separate buckets to hold everything. I am 1/2 through the boil and notice I have 2-3 lbs of uncrushed grain that did not make it into the mash. This explains why my pre-boil gravity was low and I collected more wort volume than I should have. I am thinking about doing a quick stove top brew in the bag method to extract what I can from these 2-3 pounds.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do?

 

[wolfman_48442]

Your first instinct sounds good to me.
Just a mini-mash/boil on the stove, combine the two.

 

[iijakii]

Either boil longer to concentrate it and get your OG up to where you were wanting it, or have a weaker brew if it's not off by too much.

Could also add some DME if you have it.

 

[sheeshomatic]

3lbs of grain is an easy stove top mash and boil. You might as well just do it that way. Just be sure you calculate your water amounts properly - The only water loss you'll have is from grain absorption, so should just be up about 2 quarts maybe in your pre-boil? ...because of those 2-3 lbs of grain wouldn't have absorbed it. You could probably boil 15 minutes longer with the main batch to take care of that - start your hop additions when you have 60 minutes left (assuming a 60 min boil). If you choose to hop the small batch, you'll need to split them appropriately - but I don't know if I'd bother for that small amount. Your hop utilization in the big batch will be just a little less because of the barely reduced volume of the wort, but I doubt it would be noticeable.

 

[msa8967]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I did a brew in the bag stove top for the remaining 2+ lbs and was able to get my gravity to within 2 points while slightly overshooting my volume. I initially thought about letting it boil longer to reduce the volume but I realized that I had already added my bittering hops at 60 min and was not sure how this would affect the taste if I boiled them longer than 60 minutes. Thus, if my hops went 75 minutes - 90 minutes would this greatly affect the utilization of the hops?

 

[sheeshomatic]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I did a brew in the bag stove top for the remaining 2+ lbs and was able to get my gravity to within 2 points while slightly overshooting my volume. I initially thought about letting it boil longer to reduce the volume but I realized that I had already added my bittering hops at 60 min and was not sure how this would affect the taste if I boiled them longer than 60 minutes. Thus, if my hops went 75 minutes - 90 minutes would this greatly affect the utilization of the hops?

Hey - good enough. I'm sure the final product will still be great. If you boiled off the extra volume, you would have increased the hop utilization by a little bit and your IBUs would be a bit higher, but probably not much after 15 additional minutes. My calculations show less than 10% increase roughly. As long as you don't change your late hop addition times. i.e. - If a 5 minute to flameout addition became a 20 minute addition, you'd extract much more bittering acids than aroma and THAT would be a change for the worse for the final product.