Old grains

[bpgreen]

I milled some grains a couple of months ago and forgot about them (as in they were sitting in a bucket with something on top of it, but nowhere close to airtight).

I know they'll have no diastatic power, but will they still be usable if I use some freshly milled grains for conversion?

I was going to add them to the compost, but if they're still able to add something, I can just toss them in the mash and toss them on the compost after mash (anybody remember that show?).

[mashani]

Does it smell and taste like grain? If so, unless it got moist, you can probably brew with it as is and it probably has not lost much if any diastatic power. But mixing it with other grains certainly won't hurt.

If it tastes like moldy cheese or cardboard, then I'd chuck it.

FWIW, I've brewed with leftover 2 month old pre-crushed grain that I repackaged in plastic zip lock freezer bags and gotten full conversion and perfectly good beer.

[bpgreen]

Does it smell and taste like grain? If so, unless it got moist, you can probably brew with it as is and it probably has not lost much if any diastatic power. But mixing it with other grains certainly won't hurt.

If it tastes like moldy cheese or cardboard, then I'd chuck it.

FWIW, I've brewed with leftover 2 month old pre-crushed grain that I repackaged in plastic zip lock freezer bags and gotten full conversion and perfectly good beer.

Thanks!

[berryman]

Before I had my own mill, I would order some online grains pre-crushed and sometimes I would get behind on brewing and it might also be a couple months before I used it. I don't know if it was good or bad but the beer seemed to turn out good. That was in a sealed bag though. I would guess as Mash said, if it didn't get damp and smells good I would use it up... at least mix it in.

[bpgreen]

I live in Utah, so there's little danger that it got damp (we had .08 inches of rain for all of September).

A neighbor's refrigerator/freezer died, and asked if I could temporarily store some of the frozen goods. While moving things around, I discovered a half gallon container of LME (roughly 6 lbs). So I pulled that out to make more room and decided to do a partial mash, with the mash part done in the mash and boil as a full volume BiaB style mash, with the LME added at flameout.

I'm also a bit short on time, so I'm going to go with a shortened boil (30 minutes). I'll use 2 oz of nugget pellets for the 30 minute addition and an ounce of citra leaf hops for 5 minutes.

I weighed the grains and they came to just under 3.5 lbs. I don't remember what the grains are, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly two row and it might have some raw wheat and or some C60.

I think it'll be either an IPA (if I get acceptable conversion) or a session IPA/hoppy APA if conversion isn't great. Either way, it'll be beer.

[Kealia]

Any update on this yet? Just curious.

[bpgreen]

I thought I posted an update. Either I posted it to the wrong thread, or I forgot to hit submit.

I brewed this up on 10/6. BeerSmith predicted an OG of 1.059 and I hit 1.057, so not too far off. In fact, since I haven't been getting very good efficiency, it's probably better than some of my recent brews. But the grains were a pretty small part of the bill, with most of it coming from LME, and I haven't tried to figure out what my actual efficiency was.

I chilled by filling a bunch of quart baggies with water and freezing them and topping off with refrigerated water, then letting it sit until the temperature dropped enough.

I pitched it on part of the US-05 yeast cake from the batch that I kegged the same day. It's been fermenting for 9 days, but I was out of town and temperatures dropped (with windows open) so it was probably below the optimal temperatures for US-05. There was a thick layer of krausen the other day, so I'm pretty sure it's still going strong.

One of my neomexicanus bines produced a handful of tiny cones, so maybe I'll toss those in as a dry hop if the freeze last night didn't ruin them.

[Kealia]

Cool, glad to hear it worked out fine. I had one batch last year where I picked up my milled grains and then couldn't brew for a month. It was the worst efficiency I'd ever had but based on the comments in this thread, I doubt it was the grains. I also saw elsewhere that you found the 3rd weight - congrats!

[bpgreen]

I also saw elsewhere that you found the 3rd weight - congrats!

Washed it and soaked it in bleach water overnight, then put it in the dishwasher.

But I'm traveling more and haven't been fermenting veggies lately.