I forgot to crush and add the crystal for my Steam Beer. I was wondering why the mash seemed so pale until I went to weigh my first hop addition and saw the bucket of grain sitting there waiting to be crushed. After a quick panic and wondering what other beer I could make I remembered I had a large mesh bag. So I stopped the boil at 182 and let it come down to 155 where I steeped the grains. It was at 137 after 35 minutes so I figure I got a decent amount of conversion.
Thanks! The funny rest of the story is that the BIAB bag was given to me by my LHBS a couple of years ago. Someone had taken it out of the package so he just tossed it in along with my order. I almost threw it away several times thinking, “I’m never going to use this thing”. Now I’m glad I’m a beer equipment hoarder! ;D
I have actually added steeped and boiled wort after the fact to get two different beers out of a ten gallon batch, so you may not have had to have gone through that exercise to get the end you desired, Your hop utilization would be a little different, but I think your results would have been as good. See ya next week!
So the trials were far from over on this one. The extra 1.5# of crystal soaked up about 1/4G and I had about a 1G boil-over as I was trying to do chores at the same time! I ended up with 3.9G at 1.052. Decision time. Make it a session Steam Beer at 4% or keg it at 4G or somewhere in the middle.
Then it hit me again. DME! 18oz in 1.25G of water got me a little over 5G at 1.049. Problem solved. 8)
Sounds like you were brewin’ with the NHC on your mind! Good recovery - I have tweaked an all grain that way with no problems when a mash got away from me while distracted and/or sparge volume snuck up there and I didn’t want to boil it down. Not often, but a couple times when I first started using a lid partly on when boiling in cold weather, for example.
