Brewday Mistake #1

[Loetz]

More bad judgement from me...

So I was heating up my water in my mash tun getting ready to add grain. I had the 19L of water recommended by Beersmith 2 sitting there in the tun. I was going to add the grain, but it looked to me like the false bottom was sitting so high that the grain would never be fully submerged in water. I can't adjust that because I'm using the tap hole that came with the 70L thermopot.

Soooo... I decided to add another 9L of hot water. I'm realizing now that I probably could have added the grains to the original 19L, but now they are sitting in 28L of water.

My question is now, what do I do about sparging?

I'm especially baffled because I was thinking about just adding another 10 L, but the false bottom really does take a lot of dead space. I'm not sure 10 L would be enough to keep the grains submerged.

EDIT: It should also be noted that my BK is only 30L.

 

[Mark1964]

first of all what brew length are you doing you only need to sparge/collect enough liquor from the grain to boil and endup with 20/25 litres use beersmith boil off calculator to work this out. It also helps in the beersmith program if you enter the data for your own equipment like mash tun size boiler size etc.

 

[Loetz]

Beersmith had suggested that I mash with 19L and sparge with 16,
I actually mashed with 28, so I'm wondering what to do about the sparge now.

 

[Baz Chaz]

I would slowly sparge adding just enough water until you have the amount you need for your brewlength in your boiler.

 

[Mark1964]

I agree and check gravity too it doesnt want to go below 1.008 if you can help it

 

[pittsy]

he is batch sparging not fly sparge ,because of this its less of a problem just try to add what you need to make up your total , even if you need to add some of the wort taken out from mash 1 it wont hurt to re add it if you dont want to add extra water just so you cover the grains

 

[Mark1964]

even so still dont want to go below that figure or he will risk tannins leeching from the grain which would taste crap

 

[pittsy]

fair enough , i never get that low a reading when batch sparge but worth keeping an eye on

 

[Loetz]

Ok, thanks! I'm going to take the first runnings in about five minutes...
:party:

 

[RobWalker]

I can only comment so much as I've gone as far as small BIAB brewing, but if I ever really start panicking about getting a low OG, I 1) add some more grain to compensate and 2) have some light dme to hand. yeah, it's not ideal, but it really depends how hardcore you are...

 

[Mark1964]

would be not efficient to add grain to an already partially mashed pile in the mash tun. Depends how long the original grain had been sat in the hot water. Then you have to start readjusting the recipe

 

[Loetz]

So at the end of my first day of brewing, here's the result:

-Hit my expected OG on the nose.
-Tastes much more bitter than I expected
-Not much nelson souvinish fruit or wine flavor on the nose or tongue which is disappointing
-Threw out loads of wort because it wouldn't fit in the BK
-Boiled off even more :/
-No boil overs!
-Wild temperature fluctuations during mash and sparge due to some problems with the PID/Probes that I need to figure out
-Screwed up sparge water/mash water ratio
-Ended up with only 17L in the FV and not the 25L that I had planned\
-scorched beer onto my immersion heater when I took it out of BK after hitting boiling temp. I should have unplugged it before I removed it.
-Forgot to buy iodine for starch test. Worried about starchy beer.
-Forgot to buy pH strips.
-Balancing the flow of wort through the chiller with the temperature was a little hard for me. I ended up having to pitch at 27.4C.
-Managed to get too busy to rehydrate the yeast & pitched dry
-Water and spilled wort EVERYWHERE


So here's the big question:
I still have a bit of unboiled wort that was never thrown out.
Should I consider boiling it for an hour, chilling it, and adding it to the FV?
The unfermented wort tastes quite a bit more bitter than I'd expected.
At this point, I've made so many mistakes that the process isn't repeatable anyway.

 

[pittsy]

however this is a big learning curve for you , first brew often goes to crap but you learn for next time , if you want then boil wort (spare) for 10 mins then throw it into fv it should balance bitterness out plus once its fermented and conditioned some of the bitterness will go so prob ok after all

 

[Loetz]

Nah actually I'm not going to boil the spare wort. It's getting late and I have a lot of other things to do.

The beer isn't overwhelmingly bitter, so maybe you're right that it will settle down after it's conditioned.

 

[Mark1964]

why dont you freeze the spare wort and use it for making yeast starters thats what i do

 

[pittsy]

why dont you freeze the spare wort and use it for making yeast starters thats what i do

what a cracking idea i often have a little left over and i usually chuck it , then days later i'd be making starters

 

[Loetz]

Ah, it's too late. I'd already thrown it all out. Next time.

So if I have 17L in the FV, how many do you think will make it to bottle after everything settles out?

 

[Mark1964]

Well you know now for next time. We used to buy DME for yeast starters but not any more any spare wort goes into sterile pop bottles and in the freezer for the starters its never failed on us yet :thumb:

 

[pittsy]

you'll end up with around 15.5 to 16 litres most likely going into bottles

 

[puravida]

Have you got a recipe we can see?