First all grain screw up--problem?

[hokieengr]

On my first all grain batch, I accidentally drained the mash tun before adding sparge water, I then proceeded to add sparge water to the drained tun, drained again, then repeated for a total of three runnings. I realized my mistake at that point.

My question is how would this affect the flavor of the beer?

 

[EvilGnome6]

That's how I do every batch intentionally. Don't worry, your beer will be just fine.

 

[Yooper]

On my first all grain batch, I accidentally drained the mash tun before adding sparge water, I then proceeded to add sparge water to the drained tun, drained again, then repeated for a total of three runnings. I realized my mistake at that point.

My question is how would this affect the flavor of the beer?

That's how I make my beer. Or, at least I have in the past. I just recently got a new system to learn, and am switching over to fly sparging (also called continuous sparging). Up until now, I've batched sparged.

It's exactly what you describe. Drain the runnings from the mash, add sparge water, stir well, drain, add second sparge water, stir well, drain. Three runnings combined into one vessel for the boil. Exactly correct.

 

[ShortSnoutBrewing]

Not sure what your mistake was...Can you share?

 

[hokieengr]

Well, the reason I asked was that I actually did this a while ago and I have since tasted the beer. It's good, but it has a slight off flavor that I cannot identify. The only thing I can guess is that it's astringecy but I can't say that for sure. No water was over 170 deg.

I had used BeerSmith to generate the sparge water volumes and temperatures and it was set up for two runnings of equal size. I don't know if this makes any difference.

On another note, the next two batches look to be quite good!

 

[OLDBREW]

fly sparging is where you don't drain the grainbed completely. you would keep an inch or two of liquid above the bed, then match output/input flow rates to hold that level until the end, then the bed is drained as you run out of makeup water.

 

[StAnthonyB]

On my first all grain batch, I accidentally drained the mash tun before adding sparge water, I then proceeded to add sparge water to the drained tun, drained again, then repeated for a total of three runnings. I realized my mistake at that point.

My question is how would this affect the flavor of the beer?

You did it properly old fella.


I do exactly that every stinkin' time and get efficiencies in the mid-80's.

 

[manticle]

I only sparge once but coupled with mash out and initial strike it gets me the volume I want. If you oversparged you may have leached tannins which could account for the astringency -it depends how low the gravity of the last runnings were.

Draining the tun and adding sparge water is as other people have said though - quite typical.

 

[sweatje]

I think the advise to raise the mash to 170 with sparge water is to denature the enzymes and end the mash. Additional water would only rinse sugars instead of potentially continuing the mash and adding additional sugars. If you already have complete conversion, I don't think it really makes that much difference.