New Brewer, messed up! Help

[arrogantbastard1977]

Hi everyone,

A buddy and I were making the recipe for Dead Guy Ale, and made an unbelievably stupid mistake.

We accidentely poured the grain bag into the fermenter and didn't fish it out.

It has been in there for 3 weeks and I am getting ready to bottle. I just don't know if it is ruined and I'm wasting my time.

Does anyone know what happens to beer if the grain bag is left in the fermenter?

 

[billl]

Did you boil the bag and grains too? That would be a bigger flavor concern. The bag itself is inert and won't hurt you beer. Lots of people dryhop in bags.

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

Yeah, the recipe asked us to boil the bag. Then we were just blind and poured it into the fermenter. We did everything according to recipe, but just messed up and it the grain bag has been sitting in the fermenter with the beer for the past 3 weeks.

 

[Adam_Selene]

Just fish some out with a wine thief or a turkey baster and taste/smell it. If it reminds you of rotten milk, then don't bottle it.

Adam Selene

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

We fished the bag out, and the bag smelled fine. The beer does taste sour, but because I've never brewed before, I don't know if the taste will change after sitting in the bottles.

 

[NotSoNew2Brew]

Hi everyone,

A buddy and I were making the recipe for Dead Guy Ale, and made an unbelievably stupid mistake.

We accidentely poured the grain bag into the fermenter and didn't fish it out.

It has been in there for 3 weeks and I am getting ready to bottle. I just don't know if it is ruined and I'm wasting my time.

Does anyone know what happens to beer if the grain bag is left in the fermenter?

The bag itself or with the grains?

Can't say much about the grains, not sure, but I once poured my wort into the carboy and when adding my bung (I think that's what it's call, don't use em anymore) it just wouldn't stay in so I pushed harder and it shot right in to the carboy. It was the best Belgium Triple i ever made....so there...

 

[billl]

??? the recipe assuredly did not call for you to boil a bag of grains. Are you talking about a bag you put hops in?

The bag itself is not a concern. If you boiled it, it was sterile and perfectly safe to have in contact with beer.

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

The bag with the grains has been in the fermenter for 3 weeks.

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

You are right, we didn't boil the bag of grains. It was supposed to just steep in there for a while before the fermenter. But instead it got transferred to the fermenter.

 

[billl]

Nothing to do about it now, but you are NOT supposed to boil the grains. You were supposed to steep the bag at about 160 for a half hour and then remove it before boiling. The fact that it got dumped into the fermenter is not the primary issue, boiling is.

Sorry**** cross post.

You've got the steps backwards.

1. steep grains in 160 water.
2. remove grain bag.
3. add extract and bring to boil.
4. add hops per schedule

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

We definitely didn't boil the grains. I messed up when I said that.

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

****. We may have boiled the grains. Does that mean everything is ruined?

 

[arrogantbastard1977]

Ok, so here's what happened. I was wrong on everything to this point, I'm going to start a new thread. It turns out it was a hop bag that got transferred to the fermenter and sat there for three weeks.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Adam_Selene]

We fished the bag out, and the bag smelled fine. The beer does taste sour, but because I've never brewed before, I don't know if the taste will change after sitting in the bottles.

Bottle it anyway. It's practice if nothing else. Flat beer right out of the fermentor can taste misleading sometimes. If it was sour enough you would be sure.

Adam Selene

 

[billl]

No, but it has the potential to cause issues depending on your water chemistry and volumes. The risk is an astringent taste - kinda like tea. That is a potential outcome, not a certainty.

Any sour taste you see at this point is likely unrelated. It's most likely Acetaldehyde. It's a sour/sour apple flavor that yeast produce when stressed. It's a very common flaw for new brewers and tends to fade with time. The way to avoid that in the future is to pitch the proper amount of yeast, aerate the wort well, and control the temps through fermentation. Sour can also be a variety of infections, but that is actually a whole lot less common than acetaldehyde.