Who is brewing, right now?

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Brewing my second EVER all grain brew. A 3 gallon clone of Jamil's saison. Well, I replaced the Tett hops with sorachi ace.

But I didn't add enough water for my sparge. Needed to heat up more water or the gravity would be WAY too high and my batch would be too small. Added almost an hour to my brew day.

Welcome to the party! Glad to see you adapt, improvise and overcome your challenge. When I first contemplated all grain, I was convinced it was all hand waving and incantations. Now I know that while there are prayers, the handwaving is because I've forgotten something.

You owe us a beer.

[GilesTH]

Brewing my second EVER all grain brew. A 3 gallon clone of Jamil's saison. Well, I replaced the Tett hops with sorachi ace.

But I didn't add enough water for my sparge. Needed to heat up more water or the gravity would be WAY too high and my batch would be too small. Added almost an hour to my brew day.

Yep, that'll happen.
I'm sure most, if not all, of us have gone through that little snafu.
You'll soon learn that having some extra hot water on hand is a fantastic idea. Even a little bit of DME comes in very handy if you don't quite hit your numbers. And a spare hydrometer and a .....You get the point. As Oz said- it'll soon become second nature and all the worries and anxiety will go away.
And don't let the damn mashtun sit overnight. Get rid of it immediately.
Or else....
Cheers and congrats to another successful brew day.

Yeah, didn't see it coming. I wondered why I looked a gallon short. And I should've used the left-over DME I got for my starter (got WAY more than I needed) because I drank the hydrometer sample about thirty minutes ago, and I still can't get rid of the bitter flavor. I did batch sparging and made that final gallon a second sparge. Pulled TONS of tannons out. Tannons that weren't there when I tasted the pre-boil sample. I'm gonna ferment it anyway and see what comes out. My first AG tastes pretty good, not what I was shooting for, but a tasty beer. This one may be the "cursed" AG brew so many new AG brewers suffer.

[spiderwrangler]

Not sure how you would get lots of tannins from an undersparged batch sparge, especially if you didn't taste it in the pre-boil. You replaced Tett with Sorachi based on weight, or based on IBU contribution?

[Ozwald]

This one may be the "cursed" AG brew so many new AG brewers suffer.

"the" cursed one...

Don't worry, man, you'll find you can fuck up every single stage of the process at least twice. By the 5th or 6th batch, it tends to make a shift from learning to something you looked over because you were concentrating on making sure you got something else right. That's par for the course.

I remember when I had AG pretty much down & I moved to a new apartment. For 6-7 batches I was fully convinced that the new pad was 100% cursed. My 'full' propane tank ran out mid-boil (I used the wrong one), I flooded the kitchen when I stepped outside to fix a boilover, I had a garbage bag of wet grain explode all over the carpet 2 steps away from the door when taking it out to the trash, my 1st stuck sparge, my 2nd stuck sparge, overflowing the MLT switching to fly sparging cause I was sick of stuck sparges, running it dry...

The single most important thing you can do is learn from your mistakes.

Not sure how you would get lots of tannins from an undersparged batch sparge, especially if you didn't taste it in the pre-boil.

From the comment about adding DME vs the gravity being too high before running out of sparge water, I'm assuming the pre-boil comment was about the 1st fill. Temperature could also pull tannins in an undersparge. That was the way I read it anyways.

[GilesTH]

Not sure how you would get lots of tannins from an undersparged batch sparge, especially if you didn't taste it in the pre-boil. You replaced Tett with Sorachi based on weight, or based on IBU contribution?

Two things that I think I did wrong: I tried to do a "mash out" by adding 3 quarts of 180 to the first infusion. Then I drained, added my sparge water, drained again. Discovered I was a gallon short, so I heated up another gallon, added it, let it sit for 15 minutes, and drained again. I think it was one or both of those that gave me the tannins.

And I tried to use the Sorachi based on IBU contribution. Even punched it all in to BeerSmith to make sure I didn't screw anything up. Is it possible I got the tannic sensation from the flame-out addition? Or would the tannins just show up post-boil and not pre-boil because of all of the boil-off?

[Ozwald]

You won't get tannins from the hops, but it's possible they are lending a flavor that could be misinterpreted as such. 180 doesn't sound too over the top & considering the heat loss in your mash bed, I would doubt that you pushed it up too high. Post boil, the flavors will be condensed, but if it wasn't noticeable pre-boil, it would only be barely to slightly noticeable after a 60-90 minute boil.

[snowcapt]

You are worrying too much.
It ain't tannins.
Just relax and breathe deep.

[GilesTH]

You are worrying too much.
It ain't tannins.
Just relax and breathe deep.

That's the attitude I've adopted. No matter what, I still want to use this as a learning opportunity and get the other parts of my process down. Still, it felt like I'd licked a tea bag. Try not to read into that