Grain ordering mishap. Solutions?

[headfreak]

Thanks to some foolish decimal point misplacement I've ended up with large sack of cracked grain that I'm not sure what to do with.

I was planning on brewing a scaled down version of the 62 Black IPA, but instead of ordering 3.8kg JW Ale Malt and .270kg each of Caraamber,Munich and Chocolate, I've got 3.8kg JW Ale Malt and 2.7kg of each of the others.

It's already a far larger grain bill than my stove top BIAB can handle and I'm not sure what a brew with those sort of proportions would come out like anyway.

Any thoughts on what I can do to rescue some of this grain would be most appreciated.

 

[manticle]

Mixed or separate?

 

[headfreak]

MIxed.

 

[chrisso81]

Grab another 35kg of JW Ale and do 10 brews?

 

[Ciderman]

That's a tough one. You pretty much need another 40kg of ale malt to bring it back to scale. I'm no expert but I'd say you'd want to try to get your specialty malts back to 10% each which would mean you'd need another 16kg of ale malt.

It's one of those things that will cost you more to fix I reckon. Might be able to sell it to someone cheap that can make bigger batches. Make some of your money back at least?

 

[headfreak]

Grab another 35kg of JW Ale and do 10 brews?

That's a lot of Black IPA...

That's a tough one. You pretty much need another 40kg of ale malt to bring it back to scale. I'm no expert but I'd say you'd want to try to get your specialty malts back to 10% each which would mean you'd need another 16kg of ale malt.

It's one of those things that will cost you more to fix I reckon. Might be able to sell it to someone cheap that can make bigger batches. Make some of your money back at least?

I think your are probably right. May just have to cut my loses.

 

[chrisso81]

I'm sure some interesting grain bills come through from time to time and retailers do get busy but you would think that 2.7kg each of choc and caraamber with only 3.8kg of base malt would have seemed odd and worth a phone call to confirm.

 

[manticle]

Shop didn't question the order?

 

[Lecterfan]

It will last for a while if you take care of it, if you know a friend with a vac sealer you could seal it up in 1kg amounts or something and use it that way. Depending on yeast and so forth you could make several different beers with it. If it was added at the very end of your stovetop biab mash or cold steeped for a few hours you could get the colour out of it without the flavour and make dark beers with it that don't have the huge character of that mix etc. Selling it makes a lot of sense, but if you are prepared to be creative you can use it in a variety of ways that won't just give you the same beer time and again.

 

[headfreak]

No question from the shop, which I was a little surprised about. They are usually very on top of things.

 

[headfreak]

It will last for a while if you take care of it, if you know a friend with a vac sealer you could seal it up in 1kg amounts or something and use it that way. Depending on yeast and so forth you could make several different beers with it. If it was added at the very end of your stovetop biab mash or cold steeped for a few hours you could get the colour out of it without the flavour and make dark beers with it that don't have the huge character of that mix etc. Selling it makes a lot of sense, but if you are prepared to be creative you can use it in a variety of ways that won't just give you the same beer time and again.

That's not a bad idea. I'd like to at least get a couple of brews out of my stuff up.

 

[Scottsrx]

If you drop in 35kgs of Ale malt then you could mix it all up and divide into 10 separate batches and then maybe offer them up for sale on here? If you were in Adelaide I would have gladly taken two lots off your hands. Would you be keen to organise postage?

 

[headfreak]

Hey Scottsrx,
A good idea, but wrangling 35kg of grain without a car might be a bit of a challenge. And I'm probably too lazy to arrange postage.


At this point I'm thinking I might just order 2 bags of 3.45kg Ale malt to give me two batches that I can add 1.2kg lots of the current mix to get me back to the original recipe (assuming I've got the maths right there).

That will leave me with 9.5kg that I'd be happy to see go to a good home if anyone in Melbourne wants to add their own base malt to it?

Otherwise I'll take Lecterfan's advice and save a few kg for colouring.

 

[indica86]

Shop didn't question the order?

Yes. What the actual ****? I would reconsider using that shop.

 

[indica86]

Buy a mill. Will help for future **** ups/

 

[Kingy]

If ya know a distiller they could put it to use.

 

[headfreak]

Buy a mill. Will help for future **** ups/

A mill is the next thing on the list. Though ordering only when sober would also help.

 

[Brewman_]

I'm sure some interesting grain bills come through from time to time and retailers do get busy but you would think that 2.7kg each of choc and caraamber with only 3.8kg of base malt would have seemed odd and worth a phone call to confirm.

Firstly just to say, this was not my customer.

I do sympathise with you however.

I often get bizarre orders, Malt bills and hop bills that blow my mind and I do call to check, and mostly the brewer is quite correct and wants what they have ordered. You get the occasional brewer who has made a mistake.

The thing is only a brewer can tell that the malt or hop bill is unusual and think to question what has been ordered. This one sounds rather obvious but if you don't brew it may not be. I would guess the order was not made up by a brewer.

Just my perspective as a retailer and I could be quite mistaken too.

Cheers Steve

 

[manticle]

Yes. What the actual ****? I would reconsider using that shop.

Not necessarily shop's fault and I'm not suggesting it should be (obvious brewer error) - just that in most circumstances, I reckon alarm bells would go off at experienced hbs. That said- may have been a massive day with a million orders and one went under the radar.

 

[headfreak]

Not necessarily shop's fault and I'm not suggesting it should be (obvious brewer error) - just that in most circumstances, I reckon alarm bells would go off at experienced hbs. That said- may have been a massive day with a million orders and one went under the radar.

And to confuse the issue I made the same error with 3 of the 4 grain types and ordered a second bag at the same time with no errors. I can see why they assumed I knew what I was doing.