Porter mash mistake

[drat12]

So, the brew day did not start out well for me. I forgot to add my strainer coil to the bottom of my mash tun and realized it after I had added the grain to the hot water in the tun. Since it was a bit hot anyway (going for 154 but it was 157), I poured it into my boiling kettle, quickly added strainer coil to the tun, then poured everything back into the tun. Temp was at 153. I figured I would just let it go.

I checked the tun right as I was getting ready to add the mash out water and it was at 148. Usually I will have a degree or two drop over an hour, but I'm sure the release of heat during the pour messed it up.

I was going to do a bourbon barrel porter on this, can I still do this, or will it ends up too thin?

 

[PGEduardo]

I say just let it ride! Much of the conversion happens fairly rapidly, and your time averaged temp was probably closer to 150+.

 

[funnelweb]

So, the brew day did not start out well for me. I forgot to add my strainer coil to the bottom of my mash tun and realized it after I had added the grain to the hot water in the tun. Since it was a bit hot anyway (going for 154 but it was 157), I poured it into my boiling kettle, quickly added strainer coil to the tun, then poured everything back into the tun. Temp was at 153. I figured I would just let it go.

I checked the tun right as I was getting ready to add the mash out water and it was at 148. Usually I will have a degree or two drop over an hour, but I'm sure the release of heat during the pour messed it up.

I was going to do a bourbon barrel porter on this, can I still do this, or will it ends up too thin?

You'll be OK mate, it's going to be a fine beer. I wouldn't worry much. Did you hit your numbers?

 

[drat12]

All numbers seem fine. I should still get my OG. Won't know for sure until my boil is over, but I think I should be okay...

Just finished sparge and I got 9 gallons of wort. WTH? I was shooting for about 7. Never gotten that much before. I'm taking 2 gallons of it separate and boiling it down until it's syrupy.... This should be interesting. Any thoughts on that?

 

[funnelweb]

Just finished sparge and I got 9 gallons of wort. WTH? Never gotten that much before. I'm taking 2 gallons of it separate and boiling it down until it's syrupy.... This should be interesting. Any thoughts on that?

Very interesting. Just don't over do. Think you'll have a deep and complex porter using this method.

 

[drat12]

Very interesting. Just don't over do. Think you'll have a deep and complex porter using this method.

I think so too. I might just age this bad boy for 6 months on oak and Bourbon now. Maybe even a vanilla bean or two...

 

[funnelweb]

I think so too. I might just age this bad boy for 6 months on oak and Bourbon now. Maybe even a vanilla bean or two...

Mmmm...it definately take some strength to let that one sit for six months without...ehh..investigating progress?? +1 on the Vanilla beans. I would even use 3 (last time i used two Madagascar beans (5 gl.) i could not taste or scent it at all.

 

[Komodo]

I find vanilla breans to add an almost sweet flavor before you get noticable vanilla flavors.

 

[joshesmusica]

you may end up slightly under your estimated FG, but I doubt it will be too much, depending how long the sparge took. did you do fly sparge or batch sparge or no sparge? did you immediately start heating the run off? the longer it sat at those temps, the more chance that the long-chain sugars had of being broken down.

it will still give you a good final product, i'm sure. what was your pre-boil gravity? if it's much lower than anticipated, then i'm sure that will explain why you got so much extra water... you used too much in the first place.

if you haven't added your hops yet, you could make up for this by just boiling the whole thing together, and boiling that down to your anticipated volume in the fermenter. i think that would be a better method than getting a syrup out of the extra 2 gallons, because you'll likely be scorching that one and will end up producing more unfermentables than you wanted.

 

[drat12]

you may end up slightly under your estimated FG, but I doubt it will be too much, depending how long the sparge took. did you do fly sparge or batch sparge or no sparge? did you immediately start heating the run off? the longer it sat at those temps, the more chance that the long-chain sugars had of being broken down.

it will still give you a good final product, i'm sure. what was your pre-boil gravity? if it's much lower than anticipated, then i'm sure that will explain why you got so much extra water... you used too much in the first place.

if you haven't added your hops yet, you could make up for this by just boiling the whole thing together, and boiling that down to your anticipated volume in the fermenter. i think that would be a better method than getting a syrup out of the extra 2 gallons, because you'll likely be scorching that one and will end up producing more unfermentables than you wanted.

FG ended up being close to what I did last time on this. Shooting for a 1.065 and hit a 1.055. I only have a 9 gallon boil kettle, so I just did a general boil with both pots. I did not make syrup with the smaller amount. I did end up adding them all together at the end of the boil and had more than 6 gallons, so I ended up tossing the last half gallon of weaker wort. Set up an overflow in case I have a gusher in the fermenter...

I would have done what you suggested with just boiling longer, but I did FWH, so that wasn't an option, unfortunately

 

[joshesmusica]

FG ended up being close to what I did last time on this. Shooting for a 1.065 and hit a 1.055. I only have a 9 gallon boil kettle, so I just did a general boil with both pots. I did not make syrup with the smaller amount. I did end up adding them all together at the end of the boil and had more than 6 gallons, so I ended up tossing the last half gallon of weaker wort. Set up an overflow in case I have a gusher in the fermenter...

I would have done what you suggested with just boiling longer, but I did FWH, so that wasn't an option, unfortunately

yeah, just for next time you want to measure your pre-boil gravity and volume. if those two are what you estimated, proceed with the boil as normal. if either of those are off, you can adjust your boil in order to make up for it so that your gravity (OG) and volume into the fermenter are what you estimated. so if you've got a case like this where the pre-boil gravity is lower than expected (it likely was if your OG was that much lower than expected!), but you ended up with way more volume than you expected, you can just boil down to what your estimated volume was, and then start your hop schedule from there. there are a number of combinations of those two being off (whether both too high, both too low, one high one low), and the solution to each looks different during the boil.

i only make these suggestions because it will help you improve your beer and your process. not because i'm worried that this beer will come out like crap.

 

[drat12]

yeah, just for next time you want to measure your pre-boil gravity and volume. if those two are what you estimated, proceed with the boil as normal. if either of those are off, you can adjust your boil in order to make up for it so that your gravity (OG) and volume into the fermenter are what you estimated. so if you've got a case like this where the pre-boil gravity is lower than expected (it likely was if your OG was that much lower than expected!), but you ended up with way more volume than you expected, you can just boil down to what your estimated volume was, and then start your hop schedule from there. there are a number of combinations of those two being off (whether both too high, both too low, one high one low), and the solution to each looks different during the boil.



i only make these suggestions because it will help you improve your beer and your process. not because i'm worried that this beer will come out like crap.

So this begs an interesting question... I don't use any of the recipe building software. Is there a way to determine what the expected OG would be based on a pre boil specific gravity?

 

[joshesmusica]

yeah, you don't need software to do it. just find some good homebrewing books and they will often give you all the formulas you need for recipe formulation and for helping to troubleshoot before the boil. or just ask on here and people are quick to explain:

so let's say that you end up with 9 gallons of 1.050 wort pre-boil.
to figure out how many total gravity points you have, you want to take your gravity reading, which is 50, and multiply it by how many gallons you have, which is 9. so you have 450 total gravity points. those are constant, those don't evaporate out. so when you boil down to say 7 gallons, now you take those total gravity points and divide by 7. so your OG would be 1.064.

in order to figure out what your estimated pre-boil volume would be, you do the same thing, but in reverse. so let's say that your recipe called for an OG of 1.055 and you were expecting to get 5.5 gallons in your fermenter. so your total gravity points would be 302.5. Your estimating about 1.5 gallons of evaporation over an hour of boiling, which means your pre-boil volume should be 7 gallons. at that volume you should then have a gravity reading of 1.043.

it's always good to take readings the whole way through of both volume and gravity. this will help determine your efficiency, and once you get your processes down tight and start getting a consistent efficiency (+/- a few % points each time is pretty consistent at our level), then you can start formulating your recipes better and start getting consistent beer.

the things you want to know in order to get your gravity readings and volume readings more consistent:
grain absorption
mash water/grist ratio (aka mash volume)
sparge volume
first runnings and end runnings gravity (if you're doing a fly/continuous sparge)
first runnings and second runnings gravity for batch sparging.
pre-boil volume and gravity
evaporation rate (typically in gallons/hr)
end of boil volume
cooling shrinkage
trub loss (if you're siphoning off the trub, instead of just pouring it in)
volume and gravity into fermenter
yeast and trub loss in fermenter (usually estimated at .5 gallons, which is why people aim for like 5.5 gallons, so they get 5 gallons of final product)

there may be more, these are what i could think of off the top of my head.