Forgot the bag

[Brewslikeaking]

Thats it. Plain and simple. Was all set up. Electric biab recirculating infusion mash at strike temp. Lashed in the grains.... forgot the bag. Theres a lobster pot (basket) sitting above a heating element and a faucet with a mesh screen. My thoughts are that i've just double the amount of cleaning i had to do and more importantly there will be some off flavors from scorching due to grain touching the heating element. Also there may be stuck sparge issues (stuck racking issues more accurately as i dont sparge with this setup). any thoughts? Do you think the scorching flavor will be apparant? If so what does it taste like? Burnt toast?

 

[doug293cz]

Doesn't take much scorching to give detectable and unpleasant flavors. I'd skip any recirc and heating during the mash. Just wrap the pot in a blanket or something to help retain heat. Then put your bag in a bucket and move the finished mash to that. Clean the pot before transferring the wort back to the pot for boiling.

Brew on

 

[JDXX1971]

Yep, I think Doug laid out your only real choice.

 

[ZmannR2]

How did it go?

 

[Brewslikeaking]

It was succesful in that beer was made. My effeciency was awful. I ended up adding the grain in before i even realized i forgot the bag. The gravity after the mash was much lower than i wanted it so i ended uo doing s 2 hr boil instead of a 1hr boil, and that only brought it up to 1075, still it should be a fine beer if it ferments. Although i had to ferment it high for the first 2 days. As it is winter the apt is set to 175'. The main result of forgetting the bag was that the grain was very wet when i removed it as i did not sparge. Without a bag or a false bottom. I was lucky that my kettle has a mesh screen on the outlet faucet inside the kettle. Without that there would be a stuck sparge for sure. Also i used the recirculation pump to move the wort from the mash tun to a separate collection vessel until i cleaned the mash tun and used it for boiling. All in all i added about 30 min to an hour of cleaning for myself and a large loss of effeciency so i needed to boil for longer. (However there may be issues with my beersmith water calculations because i think they were high ti begin with). All in all if i was doing brew in a bag and didnt have a recirculation pump i think i have gotten a much worse stuck sparge when drsining the mash tun.

 

[Brewslikeaking]

This how i removed the grain without the bag.

 

[AkTom]

Dude... you should just get a mash tun. Saves a lot of work.
Just kidding;-)