Forgot to add LME!!!

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Sudtirol

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Yesterday I invited a buddy of mine over to help me brew an extract. We steeped the grain and had the 6.5 lb bucket of LME sitting under the table. Needless to say, forgot to add it to the brew pot for the 60 min boil, too many home brews while brewing :drunk:. We did all of the hops additions as per the recipe.
Cooled the wort down in 20 minutes to 80 degrees pitching temp, pitched the yeast and poured the wort into the fermenting bucket and put the lid on.
As we were cleaning up I noticed that the bucket was under the table, DOH!!!!!
I told my buddy that we will have to pour the wort back into the brew pot and heat it up to pitching temp. (I didn't want to ruin the yeast already pitched) and then add the LME. So we added the LME and the temp quickly rose to 90 degrees, we turned off the flame and just stirred the wort with the newly added LME for about half an hour. We then poured the wort at 80 degrees back into the bucket and put the lid on.
The other option I thought about was to bring the wort back up to boil , add the LME and cool. Then I would have had to pitch new yeast and would have ruined the hops flavoring?

Good news is this morning the fermentor is bubbling away as it normally would.

So my questions are as follows: What are the draw backs to not boiling the LME, will it take longer to ferment, will there be off flavors.
I can't believe I forgot the LME :mad: !!!
 
You won't kill an bacteria if it isn't boiling. Other than that, I don't think there is too much of a problem. People add extract at the end of boils all the time (DME is even added post boil). I bet it will be fine.
 
I often add my LME at flameout. I'm sure you'll be fine.

LME is a very good medium for bacteria to grow, so if it was infected you'd have known having it sit in it's tub for a few days at room temp. If the tub isn't swollen and the LME isn't bubbling, you could have probably even just added it directly to the fermenter. The yeast would've found it even if it sunk to the bottom at first. Not the best way to do it, but it would've worked.

One thought... you say you heated the beer back "up to pitching temp". Your pitching temp should be the same as your ferment temp. Pitching hot can cause the yeast to take off fast and furious and give you trouble bringing the temp down, leading to off flavors.
 
ChshreCat:
I typically pitch at about 75 degrees, I know that 80 degrees is at the high end of pitching temp but figured it would be alright. The fermentation temp in my house is at 70 degrees. I have not had any off flavors in the past.
Do you think the fermentaion process will take longer this time around, since the LME was not boiled?
 
A better solution at that point would have been to boil up some water, add the LME, cool and add to fermenter, however, I think your beer will turn out just fine. It is really hard to mess up beer! Drunken brewers have been known to do all sorts of silly stuff during brewing but they still end up with beer. :D
 
ChshreCat:

Do you think the fermentaion process will take longer this time around, since the LME was not boiled?

Nope. Shouldn't make any difference.

As Nurmey said, if this happens again, just boil a little water, turn off the heat and mix the LME into it. Doesn't even need to be much water so it wouldn't affect your volumes much.

If you were really tight for volume in the fermenter, you could do the same with a small amount of the beer rather than racking and heating the whole thing.
 
ChshreCat:
Thanks for the input, trust me I will pay more attention in the future to avoid this happening again!
 
did the same thing with a Pliny the Elder clone a few weeks ago, and realized my mistake as I was about to pass out in bed. This week tasted as I was racking to secondary, definitely the best beer I've made so far, much better than the APA I racked at the same time which was brewed as it was supposed to have been... RDWHAHB
 
***UPDATE***
The hydrometer reading was 1.056 when I put it into the fermenter, that was a week ago. The initial reading last night was 1.026 and then after I let it sit for about ten minutes the reading was 1.018. The sample was very brown and cloudy, it did have good flavor. I suspect that is because the LME was not boiled. I transfered it to a carboy hoping that some of that will settle out. Next friday I will bottle and see how it is then.
 
It's still finishing up fermenting. Leave it be and when the yeast are done fermenting, they'll flocculate and settle out. It's completely normal. The reason for your change in your reading is probably because of CO2 bubbles clinging to the hydrometer. After letting it sit, they went away. You can also do the same thing by spinning the hydrometer in the sample to dislodge the bubbles.
 
Bad news came home from work and went to look at the wort, there is white patches of mold floatimg on top of the wort. Time to throw in the towel and brew again!!
 
When you took your reading it jiggled the yeast around enough to make floaties. It's not a problem.

Time to relax and step way from your fermenter for another week or two. Let the yeast do its job on its own time frame because no matter how much you want it to hurry, it will not go faster. :)
 
After a week, nearly all my beers look like creek water after a storm. After 2 weeks it starts to look a lot clearer, but it's really not what I'd call clear until 3 weeks.
 
Yesterday I invited a buddy of mine over to help me brew an extract. We steeped the grain and had the 6.5 lb bucket of LME sitting under the table. Needless to say, forgot to add it to the brew pot for the 60 min boil, too many home brews while brewing :drunk:. We did all of the hops additions as per the recipe.
Cooled the wort down in 20 minutes to 80 degrees pitching temp, pitched the yeast and poured the wort into the fermenting bucket and put the lid on.
As we were cleaning up I noticed that the bucket was under the table, DOH!!!!!
I told my buddy that we will have to pour the wort back into the brew pot and heat it up to pitching temp. (I didn't want to ruin the yeast already pitched) and then add the LME. So we added the LME and the temp quickly rose to 90 degrees, we turned off the flame and just stirred the wort with the newly added LME for about half an hour. We then poured the wort at 80 degrees back into the bucket and put the lid on.
The other option I thought about was to bring the wort back up to boil , add the LME and cool. Then I would have had to pitch new yeast and would have ruined the hops flavoring?

Good news is this morning the fermentor is bubbling away as it normally would.

So my questions are as follows: What are the draw backs to not boiling the LME, will it take longer to ferment, will there be off flavors.
I can't believe I forgot the LME :mad: !!!

LME bacterial contamination "in the bucket" is unlikely...the low water content is like maple syrup or jelly (hygroscopic/hypertonic)...dries out any bacteria and pretty much kills them (spores can survive). However, molds can grow on it eventually (lower temp keeps mold growth to a minimum, but does not completely inhibit growth). If you pitched a good population of yeast, it will probably ferment O.K..

90 degrees will cause the yeast to put off some off flavors...but as Revvy would say, give the yeast plenty of time to soak all the bad stuff back out of solution, and things will probably turn out fine in the end. Aging may be your best friend for this batch.

There are other purposes for the boil (not just killing bacteria). Boiling affects the flavor profile of the wort. Not boiling will result in a different flavor profile of your beer. But since you already went through the procedure, go with it...your beer may taste just fine - probably not how the recipe was intended to taste...but maybe not bad either.

If you run into this problem again (my guess is probably not)...I would go with the "other option" boil the wort again and repitch new yeast. However, you will also need to add new aroma hops, and your original aroma hops turn into bittering hops - your beer will be more bitter than designed in this case. But again, it might not be bad.

Roll with the punches!!:D

Cheers,
PikledBill
 
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Looks like normal bubbles to me. Try to take a very careful look at one of the patches and I'm sure you will see very small bubbles rising and popping.

EDIT: Even if a batch is moldy, it can still be saved. Just rack the beer under the mold and leave about 1 inch of beer left with the mold on it behind.
 
Ha! I lov it wen yuo tri to corekt sumwon and thn you mack a misteak yurself.

I thought it was obvious it was intentional... mis-using four instead of for in light of the situation... maybe I should have made it more ecsplisit.
 
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