I made a big mistake...

[Railsplitter]

Okay, so I did my first ever homebrew yesterday. It was a classic stout and I believe I did everything correctly. I was anal about making sure I was following the steps in the right order, adding things at the right time, monitoring temps, etc...but I missed a big one!

I somehow misread the instructions and thought that I was supposed to let the malt/grains/hops sit for an hour at 160 degrees. Looking back, I feel like a total *******. How on earth did I think that 160 degrees was the temperature to use for my boil phase? How about 212 degrees...ya know...where the wort will boil.

Anyway, it's past me now. I feel MUCH more comfortable with the brewing process and will knock the next one out of the park. Plus I still had a fantastic time brewing.

I'm assuming my beer is garbage at this point and I should just toss it out...I mean it never came to a full boil. Maybe it hit 170 degrees, but definitely no higher than that. I'm assuming there's a ton of wild yeast and bacteria that I want nothing to do with.

Anyway, minus my extremely rookie mistake, I'm excited to officially have started homebrewing! Cheers!

 

[BrewerBrad82]

I honestly think you will still have a drinkable beer. Holding at those temps for that long pretty much pasteurized the whole batch, so I would really not worry about wild yeast/bacteria. Let it ferment and see what you get.

Welcome to the best hobby ever!

 

[kev211]

HTST pasteurization is 161 degrees for about 30 secs IIRC, so I think leaving it at 160+ for an hour should do you just fine. It may not have much hop bitterness, but it will still be beer. Who knows, it may be the best beer youll ever make! HA!

Seriously though. Let it ride, and start planning that next brew! Welcome!

 

[FVillatoro]

Don't worry about making mistakes, we all have made then (and I still make them from time to time).
It's a part of learning.

You will probably have a less bitter beer and probably some DSM if it's all grain (if it's extract then no need to worry about this).
Haze may also be an issue, but since it's a stout clarity won't matter.

 

[Railsplitter]

BrewerBrad and Key - this is great news! I felt like a complete idiot, and now I only feel like a semi-idiot. Sweet! I'm still excited for my next batch, too!

FVillatoro - thanks for the kind words. I'll take this as a learning experience and move on.

 

[paperairplane]

If this is a hoppy style, you may want to dry hop (just add pellets to primary fermenter) to boost your ibu some. The lower temp would result in less hop isomerization and lower bitterness.

 

[kev211]

BrewerBrad and Key - this is great news! I felt like a complete idiot, and now I only feel like a semi-idiot. Sweet! I'm still excited for my next batch, too!

FVillatoro - thanks for the kind words. I'll take this as a learning experience and move on.

At the end of the day, we're all idiots, I mean come on, we spend our lives obsessing about a beverage haha You'll see it more here on this website, but in this case you need to RDWAHAHB (Relax, Dont Worry And Have A HomeBrew), or maybe a commercial brew since this was your first beer

Either way, we all make mistakes while brewing. Its part of the fun, and some of our best beers have come from mistakes. I brewed a stout for Christmas and misread my own recipe and used 12 lbs of base malt instead of 16. And it came out to be the most drinkable, tasty stout Ive made to date. So embrace your mistakes, learn from them, and let it ride :rockin:

 

[Jaybird]

You are going to be JUST FINE! Congrats on catching it and realizing its not the end of the world. There are going to be PLENTY of beers in your future.

Welcome to the obsession. I would be getting another fermenting bucket ASAP and starting that second batch while its all still fresh in your head.

Cheers
Jay

 

[wtrfwlnut]

These guys are awesome and helpful. I have made mistakes in my first 2 brews also, and while #2 is still fermenting, #1 came out not terrible! Room for improvement, heck yeah but what I'm learning is that most of the time even mistakes can change the dynamics of the beer but might not render the batch totally undrinkable.

What a fun hobby...Starting to get into water dynamics now...my head is spinning!

Anyway, cheers to your first brew and good luck!

 

[ong]

If you sample it and it's just insanely sweet, an option would be boiling a pint of water with hops to make a strong bitter tea, and adding that to the primary to deliver a little bitterness.

 

[mattdee1]

If it's a stout, I don't see a problem. Sure, maybe the final flavor will be a bit different from what you were shooting for, but a low-IBU dark beer will probably be quite good in and of itself. I'd say roll with it and report back with findings--that way the rest of us can see the outcome and learn something from it.

 

[jtratcliff]

Search the forums for folks who do no-boil on purpose...

e.g.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=540077

they still end up with beer!

 

[Aristotelian]

Did you just make this wort? If you haven't fermented yet, I would go ahead and give it a quick boil for 10 minutes or so, just to give you peace of mind that you have killed anything that could potentially cause an infection.

 

[Railsplitter]

Wow, so much great advice and encouragement. You guys are pretty fantastic! Thanks!

And for those asking, it's a classic stout, so I guess I should be good!

 

[jddevinn]

Boiled wort will increase in color due to 'non-enzymatic browning' so you will be off in color

The removal of some high molecular weight protein is one of the objects of wort boiling. Insufficient coagulation and the removal of such proteins may affect exchange process between yeast cells and the surrounding medium leading to an insufficient PH drop in the fermentation. The excess protein may not then be eliminated during the fermentation and lead to clarification problems and harsh bitterness in the final beer. Further, proteins surviving into the final beer may react, on storage, with polyphenols to form a non-biological haze which will shorten the shelf life of the beer.


I'd still keep it to see what it tastes like.

 

[McKnuckle]

Nobody has mentioned it yet, but if you didn't boil, you didn't evaporate liquid and concentrate the sugars - so you have low gravity. (Did you test it with a hydrometer?)

Ironically, with the likelihood of low hops utilization, it might balance out better this way. It'll be a "mild stout" as it were.