Someone please tell me to relax and have a home brew...
I brewed a batch of Scottish Ale today. I'm pretty sure I had enough water in my original mash - I followed the ProMash recommendation. When I began to sparge, the flow to the kettle slowed to a trickle and finally stopped. I had to resort to sucking on the tube to get some flow going and repeat this every few minutes. The sparging process took two and a half hours and the sparge water at the top of the tun cooled to about 140 degrees. I ended up with a lot of grain in my wort that I didn't really notice until mid boil.
After the boil, I filtered the wort through a strainer covered in a grain bag three times but there's still a fair amount of tiny particles in my wort.
When I washed out the tun afterwards, the only problem I saw was the tube that connects inside the tun turned a whitish color. I was thinking it could be temperature damage, but I was careful not to sparge over 170 degrees. Perhaps it was the sheer length of the sparging process.
I have a few questions for any kind soul out there:
- What might have happened inside my tun to cause this?
- Is my batch spoiled by boiling this grain?
- Will the residual grain particles settle and be left behind when I siphon it to the secondary?
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Ken