Mash yesterday, Boil Today?

[jay075j]

Hey All,

So last night I started to brew a Dunkelweizen, and all was going well as normal during the mash.

I was finishing up warming up my sparge water in my boil kettle and I noticed that the sight tube on my kettle was actually starting to warp due to the heat. This is where I made the mistake of touching it to try to straighten it out and then the stupid thing came off in my hand! Now I had about 10 gal of 170 degree water flowing out of the bottom of my kettle with no way to stop it.

And of course this was on New Years Eve and not even Home Depot was open for me to go get a plug to cover the fitting and continue my brew. That will be done today.

My question is, can I still use the same mash from last night? I did nothing with the mash, or grist, or wort. It is all still in the cooler / MLT that I brought into the house to at least keep it at room temp.

Should I just start all over again with buying new grain, or can I capture my wort and just sparge now?

Thanks for the help!

Jay

 

[dwarven_stout]

Smell it and taste it. If it doesn't smell like vomit or taste tart, it's probably fine. Take the temp, too- if it managed to stay above 140 in the cooler, it'll be ok for sure.

I mash overnight occasionally, and I've mashed out at night and boiled in the morning once or twice and haven't had problems yet.

 

[jay075j]

Thanks for the advice! I just opened it up to take a whif, and I think I just puked in my own mouth....

I'm not going to risk loosing my hops and yeast to this thing. I'm just going to start over tomorrow. Everyone is closed today.

Take care and have a great New Year!

 

[Torg]

Generally you do not even need to taste it. It should smell quite sour. You can even see it fermenting. This is all from wild yeasts who love that mash as much as the yeast you want to eat it. They invaded about the time you opened the mash tun. What stops them normally is to boil the mash to kill them.

Anyone who has left the grain in the mash tun after sparging overnight can tell you what wild yeast smells like. It is why I am so particular about cleaning up after each step.

 

[dwarven_stout]

If it smells off, then yeah- don't use it for your planned beer. You could still try a "wild ale", though.. ;-)

 

[dwarven_stout]

Generally you do not even need to taste it. It should smell quite sour. You can even see it fermenting. This is all from wild yeasts who love that mash as much as the yeast you want to eat it. They invaded about the time you opened the mash tun. What stops them normally is to boil the mash to kill them.

Anyone who has left the grain in the mash tun after sparging overnight can tell you what wild yeast smells like. It is why I am so particular about cleaning up after each step.

Well, the vomit smell is usually Clostridium butyricum. They make butyric acid, which is a major "aromatic" in vomit. Wild yeast don't make a whole lot of stink, but they will turn it sour and funky.

 

[moger777]

This is actually how some German brewers used to (and probably still do in some areas) lower the pH of the mash for making beers where the water was too hard for lighter beers. They would combine a small portion of the sour mash would be combined with the regular mash to get the right pH. Now a days it's much simpler to just add acid directly. Sour mash whiskey is also done in this manner.

 

[chemman14]

This is actually how some German brewers used to (and probably still do in some areas) lower the pH of the mash for making beers where the water was too hard for lighter beers. They would combine a small portion of the sour mash would be combined with the regular mash to get the right pH. Now a days it's much simpler to just add acid directly. Sour mash whiskey is also done in this manner.

they definitely still do that, they arent allowed to use anything other than malt yeast water and hops because of the Reinheitsgebot