Grain in Primary?

[jwarren]

So, I made a dumb dumb. I did my second partial grain brew the other day, a nice imperial stout. I did everything the proper way, mostly. Did my mash with a grain bag. Pulled it out, sparged, boiled, etc. Well, when I was straining the wort into my primary I made a few booboos. First--My strainer clogged because my grain bag had a small hole in it about the size of a quarter. It leaked some grains out, which I didn't notice until the end of the boil when I was straining. Long story short, I spilled some wort when the strainer jammed, said a few bad words, and ended up getting some grains in my primary. A few days later (now) fermentation is slowing down. Do I move to secondary ASAP, or just let it go? There's probably 1/2" of grain in the bottom of my primary. After I spilled the wort I pretty much kissed this one goodbye because I had already added my cold water, so I missed my gravity by about 19 points.

 

[rpappi]

just pour the wort back in the boil pot and run it through the strainer again!

 

[Revvy]

just pour the wort back in the boil pot and run it through the strainer again!

You're not serious are you???

At this point fermentation is happenning, if he does that he's going to oxydize his beer.

Jwaaren just leave it alone. Let it finish fermenting, and either leave it in primary for a month (what I would do), or wait 2 weeks and rack to a secondary for another two weeks. And let everything settle.

And then when you rack you can leave it behind... Just start your siphon higher than the level it has settled to, let all the clear beer flow through, then you can CAREFULLY "vacuum" the rest of the beer off the surface of the trub/grain layer. And ou can leave it behind withot ruining your beer trying something else.

I'd opt for the month or more primary to allow the yeast cake to compress and like concrete, trap the grain in the trub.

This is my yeastcake for my Sri Lankin Stout that sat in primary for 5 weeks. Notice how tight the yeast cake is? None of that got racked over to my bottling bucket.

That little bit of beer to the left is all of the 5 gallons that DIDN'T get vaccumed off the surface of the tight trub. When I put 5 gallons in my fermenter, I tend to get 5 gallons into bottles. The cake itself is like cement, it's about an inch thick and very, very dense, you can't just tilt your bucket and have it fall out. I had to use water pressure to get it to come out.

And this is the last little bit of beer in the bottling bucket, this is the only sediment that made it trhough and that was done on purpose, when I rack I always make sure to rub the autosiphon across the bottom of the primary to make sure there's plenty of yeast in suspension to carb the beer, but my bottles are all clear and have little sediment in them.

If you do the same thing, just let everything settle, and the yeast cake compress then you will leave the grain behind.

At the worst case, just before bottling you may want to cold crash ti further pull stuff out of solution. But I don't think you'll have to worry.

Just leave it all alone and it will settle out eventually.