Batch sparged and boiled too long!

Brewing Processes
1

I’m new to all grain brewing (and brewing in general) and so far have had good success. However with my last brew I clearly wasn’t paying attention to the recipe instructions (a Porter).

With hindsight the recipe stated heat 7 gallons of water and fly sparge til you collect your volume for the boil over around an hour.

I read it as batch sparge with 7 gallons for an hour.

So - what affect will this have had?

I’ve tried Googling and nothing bad comes back from batch sparging too long. Is that true?

On the plus side my OG ended up being 1.071 when the target was 1.063-1.068.  My yeast can cope with that OG so all is good right?

This obviously lead to the problem which made me realise my initial error. I now have way too much for my boil.

So I took to Google and the general opinion was boiling over an hour as long as you don’t add hops won’t do anything bad other than generate caramelised flavours. My sugars are spread over way too much liquid now - if I ditch liquid I lose sugars and final alcohol and that sucks!
I thought ‘this is a porter - that can’t be too bad’. So I pre-boiled for an hour to reduce my volume then when I was down to where I wanted to be went back to following the recipe and made my first hop addition and boiled for 60 mins to get my final 5.5g.

Now I don’t think what I did above is going to cause me an issue - but wondering was leaving my initial mash in the boil pot waiting for my sparge have caused DME production that will affect my final beer?

I’m sure it’s all going to turn out ok - just wondering what impact my ‘slight’ deviations from the instructions will have caused

Thanks in advance for your replies!

2

I think you meant DMS, not DME.  No you didn’t cause a DMS problem.

You may develop some “caramelized” flavors, which are really Maillard flavors, but they’ll probably be hard to pick up in a Porter.  Also the Maillard flavors will be low because the concentration of sugar wasn’t that high in your boil. The extra boiling will  make the beer darker but it’ll be hard to notice that in a Porter.

RDWHAHB!

3

While sparging all your doing is rinsing the grain and collecting the extra sugar and flavor. I’m not sure what you mean by producing DME. Maybe you used the wrong terminology.
Check out Dennys website it has lots of great info on mashing and batch sparge.
He also talks about homebrew myths and misconceptions relative to sparging temperatures.
dennybrew.com

Cheers

4

Yes, I meant DMS.

Looks like it’s all ok then - other than I wasted time! Fortunately I spent that time well by drinking beer - so no waste at all!

5

More aboot DMS.

Let us know how that porter turns out.

Cheers

6

Concerns over caramelization in the kettle are not valid.  No worries.  Sounds to me like you did the right thing after realizing your error in the oversparge.  I would have done the same thing in your situation.

Cheers.

7

Your fine, especially with a porter.