I messed up, what can I expect?

[BrewBarron]

So,

I definitely wasn't in the zone yesterday, and made a few bone head mistakes when I brewed my first Cascadian Dark. During mash in, I guess I forgot to turn my pump off and walked away for a minute. When I came back, my HLT was almost empty, my heating element was a second away from popping, and my 10 gallon mash tun was almost overflowing with water. I usually fly sparge, so I didn't know what else to do but just mash at 152-153 for 60 minutes as usual. So, after 60 minutes, I drained the whole mash tun and got about 6.25 gallons into the boil. I hit my numbers and my OG was about 1.059 going into the fermenter.
So, besides my lower efficiency, what can I expect from this beer? I know everything I've read says you should only use around 1.5 quarts of water per lb of grain during the mash and that you should mash out at a higher temp, but since I already had my boil volume, I didn't know what else to do. Any thoughts?

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Sounds like you got a bit distracted during your brewday, something that's pretty easy to do. I use Strike Water Calculator to help me figure out all that stuff like grain temperature, mash thickness and total volume.

The first time I used my new all grain setup I spent hours doing the calculations which actually helped me hit all my temperature spot on. Now when doing recipes I just look back on my notes and only have to make slight adjustments to those initial numbers.

I guess you added about 9-11 pounds of grain to the tun and about double the amount of water? The good news is you will have beer, let us know how it turns out.

 

[bruin_ale]

shouldn't make much difference, you basically stumbled into the "no-sparge" method that some brewers already do.
I don't even want to know why you would leave after you start pumping your mash water in. Also, I always shut my HLT element off before I pump the water over (since I've hit the exact temp I want anyways). The entire step of transferring mash water takes about a minute, and I'm usually trying to hit a fairly precise volume (ie. yesterday was 5.5 gallons) so I need to watch closely to shut down the pump right when it hits that volume.

 

[BrewBarron]

No sparge huh?

Yeah, I wasn't sure about the whole raising the water temp to mash out. I guess I did raise the temp when I dumped it in the boil and cranked the propane, but not sure thats gives the same effect.

About walking away from the pump, I could have sworn that I turned it off. I was watching as I hit my volume in the mash tun and thought I closed the valve. Guess not. Like I said, I was not in the zone yesterday and made some stupid mistakes. Good news is that I didn't blow another element.

 

[stevedasleeve]

I wouldn't worry. "I hit my numbers and my OG was about 1.059 going into the fermenter. "

If you hit your numbers you're efficiency was the same! One thing everyone eventually finds out is that if you mix malt, hops, & yeast you end up with beer almost despite yourself!!

 

[bruin_ale]

ahh.. yeah, it happens.

raising the temp for mashout just helps you get the sugars into solution more easily, so more of an efficiency thing.