Longer boil and higher sparge temp...

[Dgonza9]

Hey guys,

I brewed 10 gallons of Belgian wit today. It was the maiden voyage of my electric brew station in the basement. Fun day and things went generally well, but there were a few mishaps so I'm wondering what to expect.

1) I had about 20.5 lbs of grain so I used 6.5 gallons of strike water at 166 degrees. I calculated 10.25 gallons of sparge water (I just used 1/2 gallon per lb of grain. This led to about 13 gallons in the boil kettle. I had to boil it for about 90+ minutes to get the volume down. Does a longer boil affect anything? Not much hops in this one. Just 1.25 oz of sterling at the start of the boil.

2) When Sparging, (since I'm going Brutus, recirculating) I turned on my heat sticks to bring the temp up to 168-170. It was a bit below at first. Well, I got distracted by my two beautiful little girls and didn't get the heat stick turned off until it hit 178 degrees.

Should I expect any ill effects or off flavors from recirculating at 178 for about 10 minutes? I used some ice and stirring to bring temp down pretty fast.

Thanks guys. Cheers!

 

[pearlbeer]

Hey guys,

I brewed 10 gallons of Belgian wit today. It was the maiden voyage of my electric brew station in the basement. Fun day and things went generally well, but there were a few mishaps so I'm wondering what to expect.

1) I had about 20.5 lbs of grain so I used 6.5 gallons of strike water at 166 degrees. I calculated 10.25 gallons of sparge water (I just used 1/2 gallon per lb of grain. This led to about 13 gallons in the boil kettle. I had to boil it for about 90+ minutes to get the volume down. Does a longer boil affect anything? Not much hops in this one. Just 1.25 oz of sterling at the start of the boil.

2) When Sparging, (since I'm going Brutus, recirculating) I turned on my heat sticks to bring the temp up to 168-170. It was a bit below at first. Well, I got distracted by my two beautiful little girls and didn't get the heat stick turned off until it hit 178 degrees.

Should I expect any ill effects or off flavors from recirculating at 178 for about 10 minutes? I used some ice and stirring to bring temp down pretty fast.

Thanks guys. Cheers!

1) Longer boil will, of course reduce the wort due to boil off, and if not expected could slightly affect your OG. Also the longer boil will carmelize the sugars a bit more, so you may have a slightly richer flavor and the color may be just a bit darker.
2) Getting the grain bed above 170 can extract some tannins from the grain. I believe this may lead to astrigent flavors.

In short - there are a lot of mights and maybes...you might also have the best batch ever. Only time will tell. RDWHAHB.

 

[Dgonza9]

Thanks for the reply. I tasted it from the bleeder valve on the pump and I have to say it was a bit astringent. Fermenting away now so hopefully that will mellow out and it'll be a tasty brew.

Thanks again.