Major malfunction batch sparge!

Sounds like your mash drained directly into your kettle? No big deal. You made the right decision to return the wort to the mash. With such a quick run-off, you would have left a lot of the sugars on the grain. Not to mention all of the protein and grain debris that would have wound up in your kettle without vorlaufing.

Just count your blessings that the mash didn't drain onto the floor, which is where I thought this story was headed.

 

Yep, count your blessings. You hit your OG. Like he said, more undesired bits of grain, but it will still be tasty. BIAB doesn't vorlauf...

 

This is neither a major malfunction nor worthy of an exclamation point. From a mash efficiency standpoint, since it sounds like you batch sparge, you probably didn't even need to return the wort to the mash tun (though it didn't hurt)...I imagine the grain bed got pretty well soaked with the sparge water before it had a chance to run off, unless you have a big horkin' ball valve. When I dump water into the tun for a batch sparge, it's fairly disruptive.

 

Yeah, it's a minor issue at worst... if it went all over the floor, then I would say it was major malfunction, exclamation ready and requiring a cry and a few beers to get over.

 

So you drained your first runnings, and left the valve open?

Then allowed all your sparge water to run through the bed really fast?

I doubt it was a huge deal.. Like stated, some grain bits without a vorlauf, and maybe a little less efficiency.

I almost left my valve open the other week on the HLT as I was filling it up with hot water for the sparge.. that would have sucked.

 

I had to do something similar but i royally screwed up. I set up for a 5 gal batch and heated 7.5 gal of mash water. Put 4 in the mash let sit for an hour. Drained it. Put 3.5 in for 10 min drained it and realized i was about to boil only 5 gallons. Freaked out threw 4 pots of water on the stove and got a small flame to the 5gal in my boil kettle. After 20 min on stove i only got temps up to about 140. Threw one in at a time did a quick vorlaf and drain. never let it sit until i got my 7 gal to boil. My OG was supposed to be 1.082 for a dipa i measured 1.062. WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP... 53% efficiency. Then to make it better when It started to boil and i added my first ounce of hops for bittering BOOM boilover. After the hour boil put in the immersion chiller and cooled it to 75deg and pitched 2 packets dry yeast.... yeah never transfered it primary before pitching. Got down to 70 and transfered to primary. The sides of the kettle were cakes of hops and dry yeast.

Within 12 hours the yeast went crazy. Reached FG of 1.016 in 2 days. Since i was dry hopping i put the entire primary bucket in the fridge for a day. Transfered to Secondary, added an ounce of pellets and put it away.

Will probably be the worst beer ever but learned everything not to do haha

 

I don't know what FG you should have expected (not enough information), but 1056 is more attenuative than WLP002. Throw in a little measurement error (maybe) and you might be right in the ballpark.

 

Don't pay any attention to that crap. BS isn't all that awesome for figuring out FG. You aren't getting 7 points in secondary.

 

Once dialed in, it rolls with you and you can learn well, and learn the process, but I see too often people get tied to a software and can't brew without it. Other than giving me a ballpark expected OG for my needed volume, I don't need it. I know generally where a beer should, or would finish at. Sometimes it's higher, and sometimes lower.

Don't take too much worth on the FG. Sometimes I get it right on, and it figures it out. Other times, I'm a couple points off and wonder why if it was something I did. Calculating the attenuation, I'm right in line of where the yeast should have put me, so it's always pretty good to go double check it before taking BS for it's word.