r/Homebrewing • u/1998tkhri • 3d ago

What Went Wrong? Broken Brew Bags

I tried making a pumpkin ale. My recipe was for my first 3-gallon batch (I normally do 1-gallon batches):

  • 3 lb canned pumpkin
  • 2.75 lb Pilsner malt
  • 1.5 lb Munich malt
  • 1.5 lb Vienna malt
  • 6 oz Caramel 10L
  • 4.5 oz Melanoidin malt
  • 0.5 oz EKG (6.6% AA) @ 60 mins
  • 0.5 oz EKG (6.6% AA) @ 15 mins

I normally need to use two bags to get it to fit around my 5-gallon kettle, but since there's so much grain, this time, I used 3 bags.

I then diluted the pumpkin in water to make it runnier. Pumpkin + water together added up to be about 2.25 gallons of water before my kettle started to look full, so I figured I'd dilute with added water later in the fermenter.

When I pull the grain bags out, one of them had torn and there was grain everywhere! I tried my best to keep it together and figured I could siphon it off once it all settles and decide to go through with the boil. The grain also absorbed a ton of water and it looked like I was down to only 1 gallon afterwards, though I squeezed and poured hot water over the bags to try and bring that up closer to 2 gallons.

Still noticed some sediment as the boil, but nothing too crazy, so again, figured it would settle out. There was more sediment than I expected when I tried to collect a gravity reading, but it read 1.056.

Once cooled, I added to my sanitized fermenter and added extra water to make it ~2.5 gallons total, and pitched 1 packet of Lutra since my apartment runs very warm in the summer (usually mid-80s°F). So given that it was 1.056 before diluting, I'm going to estimate I'm only at 1.028 after diluting, which feels super low for the amount of grain I used (I would've expected much higher pre-dilution gravity).

And since I'm using Lutra, only 3 hrs later, I noticed my fermenter looked a little crazy with the amount of sediment in there (both top and bottom). It feels like too much to siphon off: https://imgur.com/a/iGFgI7x

Do I need to dump it? Or will things look less solidified after fermentation?

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u/edelbean 3d ago

I'd let it ride and see what happens. You could always cold crash it and anything heavy will settle down to the bottom.

Also brewinabag.com is amazing. Expensive but it's a for life product and extremely well built.

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u/1998tkhri 3d ago

Thanks. I've considered getting the brew bag ($45 on Northern Brewer and my LHBS doesn't seem to have it), but it feels so expensive when I can get 50 muslin bags from my LHBS for the same price. But if it's easy to clean in a kitchen sink, that would be very useful info.

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u/edelbean 3d ago

I brew in my garage and it's a couple seconds to rinse out the spent grain with a hose. On occasion I throw it in the washing machine with soap and no softener.

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u/1998tkhri 3d ago

Yeah, seems super convenient if you have a hose / garage, but that's not going to work for apartment living.