Grainfather brew # 5 - Disaster! Help!

[LlewBru]

Good morning people, I have recently completed my 5th Grainfather brew with brews 1 to 4 being great. Brew # 5 I saw an article regarding no sparge brewing. Great, I thought , since sparging is an absolute pain. Unfortunately I miscalculated my grain bill on a 23 liter batch & am now sitting with a brew that looks great (Red ale), smells OK but tastes watery & very thin!
Question: Can I dump this whole lot back in the boiler again, boil it off a bit & use it as a base for another batch? My gut instinct says to bin it but I hate throwing beer down the tubes - I'm sure you understand!
Some educated comments please - I'm embarrassed enough! I forgot to mention - it tastes as if there is zero alcohol although OG was 1045 & FG 1012!

[Tony1951]

If you have already fermented it, you can't boil it off. You would destroy the alcohol for a start.

The OG and FG figures you quote suggest that fermentation proceeded normally and you have a brew with 4.4% abv

Perhaps the problem is in the recipe you used. If you post the full recipe including the grain bill, someone may be able to help explain what happened.

Cheers

[LlewBru]

Hi Tony,
Thanks. I'm not too fussed about the alcohol - as I said it tastes as if it is zero anyway. I was wondering if, by boiling it off a tad that some of the original grain flavours would still be noticeable. But, yeah, you right, I guess it's heading for the bin.

[stevej383]

It might be worth hanging on to, ive had ales that tasted not so good while young and have turned into great ales after 5/6 months, nothing to lose!

[Tony1951]

What Steve just said is right.

The first thing to leave the brew if you heat it up will be the alcohol.

Let us see the recipe and maybe people can comment about why it tastes bland. Grain hops yeast and method.

[LlewBru]

Hi guys,
Attached is the sheet from Brewsmith (PDF format). As I said I got a bit big-headed & tried out a "no sparge" method & I think my problem is around the amount of grain to liquor - too little grain for this method! I think I should have hit a grain bill of around 9Kg. The mash was split into two & took around 5 minute to get up to the 65-68 temp. I normally rest the grain 'barrel' on top while waiting for the boil to start - about 20 minutes - this is when I normally sparge as well & this allows the grain to drain quite well resulting in about 200ml that drains into a bowl once I remove it. This has worked well before with Red Ale, Stout & Porter.
This recipe has been utilised before (slightly lower grain bill giving 16L of finished product) & giving a very nice ale with an abv of around 4.8%
Thanks for you comments,
Llew

[LlewBru]

Sorry - just seen that the PDF extension is not allowed! I'll look for something else.....

[LlewBru]

Hi,
Here it is in text format - not very pretty but there you go! Any reason you know of why PDF format is not allowed?

Damn! So TXT format is also not allowed? What is?

[Goulders]

Cut and paste the text into a post

[Fil]

#1 check your hydrometer!! a OG of 1045 and FG of 1012 should be a reasonable beer alcohol wise.. well over 4%

lack of body is probably down to the mash temp being off a lil too far in one direction cant remember off the top of my head which way round it is now, but i suspect a tad too warm. Producing too much simple sugar for fermenting and not enough residual long chain complex sugars behind for the body..

its worth stashing the brew for a month or two to see if it will improve,, but dont sit on it too long as it will only loose more body if stashed 6 months or more as the yeast slowly munch on the residual sugars..

[LlewBru]

Thanks for the comments all! I never thought of the mash temp but I did do a two phase - 1 at 45'C for 30 minutes & then the other (supposedly) at 65-68 for 60 Minutes. Oi Vey - I just checked my brewery & found my fuggles still where I left them! Mebbe that never helped either.....
So a few things I will do:-
1) Check the Grainfathers temp readings manually
2) Definitely leave the brew for a few more weeks
3) I don't think I will try the No Sparge method again for a while & when I do I will make sure that my grain/liquor ratio is correct! I'm still of the opinion that the grain bill was too light for that process...
Best regards & have a great day,
Llew

[Newbrew1]

Hi I'm not an all grain brewer, I do kits at the moment. But here's a thought put said brew into chest freezer for an hour take out and some of the water will have frozen remove water chunks and then you will have a more concentrated brew.do this a couple of times and your alcohol % should go up. This is how the one of the beers with the highest % was made in scotland can't remember the name of the brew. As you know alcohol will not freeze at the same temp as water. Just a thought or am I mad

[alexlark]

Yea, that's what Brewdog did.

[LlewBru]

Really? It would work I guess but the PT.....

Thanks for the info anyway but I think I'm going to bin it! Enough fannying about I'll just start a new brew!

[Dave S]

Thanks for the comments all! I never thought of the mash temp but I did do a two phase - 1 at 45'C for 30 minutes & then the other (supposedly) at 65-68 for 60 Minutes. Oi Vey - I just checked my brewery & found my fuggles still where I left them! Mebbe that never helped either.....
So a few things I will do:-
1) Check the Grainfathers temp readings manually
2) Definitely leave the brew for a few more weeks
3) I don't think I will try the No Sparge method again for a while & when I do I will make sure that my grain/liquor ratio is correct! I'm still of the opinion that the grain bill was too light for that process...
Best regards & have a great day,
Llew

I know it's tempting to do multi-step mashes simply because you can. But there really is no need with modern well-modified malt. You've done a beta Glucan rest at 45C. This is getting up to where protein chains are broken down. If they break down too far, (and that is a real possibility when they didn't need breaking down anyway) it will adversely affect body (mouth feel) and head retention.