Help quickly please! Too much grain!

[Brewsday]

So I learned today that 14# of grain and 4.5 gallons of water is TOO MUCH for my 5 gallon orange MT. To get all the grain in I drew off about 3 quarts. In the end I was able to add back about half of it. Now I am 15 minutes into the mash and have 45 minutes to figure out what to do with that "extra" 1.5 qts. Can I add it back with the sparge water? Seems like there are conversions that have not taken place. It's nice dark and even sweet stuffff but I will probably throw it away unless I get someone out there to answer in the next 30 minutes...THANKS!

 

[Gduck]

Once I've emptied the initial mash water I'd just dump it in the grains and let it sit in there for 5 or 10 minutes and then sparge as normal.

 

[kinison_fan]

Yes, use it to sparge.

 

[Brewsday]

Thanks for the quick input. Back in it goes! I am still a little curious what people think has taken place in this "early runnings". It is tasty enough to consider using instead of water in some of my spent grain bread...but I'd rather make beer!

 

[jfowler1]

It won't help you today, but add this site to your favorites.

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

The "Can I Mash It?" field will be useful before every single brewday.

I also use an orange 5G MLT. I can easily mash 15 lbs of grain at 1:1 qts:lb (as long as I have my strike water hot enough) and I still have room for a half-assed mashout.

 

[Revvy]

Another option is to go for a different grain to water ratio. I do it all the time with my 5g cooler using the greenbay rackers calculator above. Shift it to less that the traditional 1.25 quarts/pound.