Doing Something Different

[thanme]

I have a brew currently keg conditioning and another fermenting. In the mean time, I'm trying to think up what to do next. So far I've been doing straight up extract brews with single hops. As a result, here are some questions:

1. I'd like to get started on the grain side of things, and as far as I can tell, my best starting point is adding specialty grains to an extract brew. Any suggestions as to what? And tips on how would be nice
2. Are specialty grains added to the boil, or do they need to be done separately to the hop boil?
3. At what point does this become "partial" instead of K&B?

4. I have the following hops sitting around (in various quantities)
Amarillo, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin.
I'd like to do something to combine some or all of the above. Would my best be do a single bittering hop, use the 2nd for bittering + flavour and the last for flavour + armoa?
Something like;
NS @ 60
Cascade @ 20
Cascade + Amarillo @ 10
Dry hop Amarillo

I think that's about it. Probably going to go for another APA style beer. Thanks

 

[big78sam]

I have a brew currently keg conditioning and another fermenting. In the mean time, I'm trying to think up what to do next. So far I've been doing straight up extract brews with single hops. As a result, here are some questions:

1. I'd like to get started on the grain side of things, and as far as I can tell, my best starting point is adding specialty grains to an extract brew. Any suggestions as to what? And tips on how would be nice
2. Are specialty grains added to the boil, or do they need to be done separately to the hop boil?
3. At what point does this become "partial" instead of K&B?

4. I have the following hops sitting around (in various quantities)
Amarillo, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin.
I'd like to do something to combine some or all of the above. Would my best be do a single bittering hop, use the 2nd for bittering + flavour and the last for flavour + armoa?
Something like;
NS @ 60
Cascade @ 20
Cascade + Amarillo @ 10
Dry hop Amarillo

I think that's about it. Probably going to go for another APA style beer. Thanks

You could try this for an extract that involves steeping specialty grain

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...&recipe=502

I'm no expert but I've read that don't boil the grain or you'll get nasty tannins. I would steep the grains at 65 to 70 degrees for 30 minutes. There's an article on steeping specialty grains that will help.

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...;showarticle=80

 

[henderjo]

Howdy NME,

I am quite literally just a couple of brews ahead of you. I just followed the instructions on the link Big Sam provided... pretty straight forward. I added some LDME and hops to my boil. This... View attachment Kit___Extract_Beer_Designer_V2.1.xls is by far the most useful thing I've found on AHB, and even since starting brewing.

Hope it goes well for you. I hope to gassing my first steeped grain brew on the weekend :icon_cheers:

John.

 

[manticle]

I have a brew currently keg conditioning and another fermenting. In the mean time, I'm trying to think up what to do next. So far I've been doing straight up extract brews with single hops. As a result, here are some questions:

1. I'd like to get started on the grain side of things, and as far as I can tell, my best starting point is adding specialty grains to an extract brew. Any suggestions as to what? And tips on how would be nice
2. Are specialty grains added to the boil, or do they need to be done separately to the hop boil?
3. At what point does this become "partial" instead of K&B?

4. I have the following hops sitting around (in various quantities)
Amarillo, Cascade and Nelson Sauvin.
I'd like to do something to combine some or all of the above. Would my best be do a single bittering hop, use the 2nd for bittering + flavour and the last for flavour + armoa?
Something like;
NS @ 60
Cascade @ 20
Cascade + Amarillo @ 10
Dry hop Amarillo

I think that's about it. Probably going to go for another APA style beer. Thanks

Steeping specialty grains adds flavour, colur and sometimes sweetness to a brew. You may get a little bit of fermentable sugar but basically it will be a very small amount. The flavour however is an extra dimension to a basic kit brew.

Specialty grains have been kilned/roasted in a way that converts the starches within which avoids getting starch in your beer (unfermentable). I believe this also gets rid of a lot of the sugar which results from the conversion which is why you can't make beer purely from specialty grains.

Specialty grains are usually on the darker end of the spectrum and include all the crystal malts (includes anything with the prefix cara-) chocolate malts, black malts etc. If you are aiming for a light coloured beer you may need to limit yourself to a crystal or at least a very small amount of a darker malt.

In order to get the colour etc from a spec grain, you need to crack it, then soak it for at least 30 minutes in hot water. How hot is not amazingly relevant but going for around 65 -70 is good practice for mashing base grains at a later point. You can supposedly also soak in cold water overnight. I've never tried this.

Once you have soaked the grains for the required amount of time you need to strain the liquid into a pot, rinse the grains with a bit more hot water and boil the resulting liquid. This is partly for healthy beer - grain supposedly contains lots of bugs. It also enables you to add hops for bittering and flavour. Thus you do not boil the grains themselves but you do boil the resulting liquid and it is the same as the hop boil. In all grain brewing you mash the grains to make the wort (liquid sugar stuff) rinse the grains to get the excess sugar off (sparge) then boil the whole lot with hops additions. No extra water. Extract/kit and specialty is a similar basic process but with a few less uncertainties.

The difference between this and a partial (partial mash) is that at least some of your fermentable sugar comes from mashing base malt.

To demystify mashing a little - it is not that different from steeping specialty grains except the amount of water and the temperature of the water become a lot more important.

Base grains such as pilsner, wheat, ale or munich (not cara-munich) need to be mashed to convert the starches to fermentable sugars. This is done by soaking (again) in hot water but the temperature of the water needs to be constant. Even a degree or two either way can change the profile of your beer - fermentability, attenuation, body etc. Too hot and the enzymes that convert stop working, too cold and they won't work at all.

As for the question about hops - it depends on which flavour you want to shine through. I'm a fan of beers with one or two hop types so I can tell what they're doing. I understand APAs are not so much like that so maybe try bittering with one then hopbursting by adding tiny amounts of each at 5 minute intervals from about 30 -20 mins before the end of the boil and then a generous aroma addition of each at the end. Not my field of expertise though.

 

[thanme]

Thanks for the article!!

That spreadsheet...I was still referring to an old version (on page one of that thread). This one is heaps better! Love to hear how your beer turns out too!

manticle: You're that man! That's cleared up a lot. As much as I've read about grains, a lot of it is still Greek to me That'll make my step to partials easier too.
I guess my problem with the hops is that I'm still waiting on my cascade and NS beers to be ready, so I don't actually know what they're like. Love Amarillo though!

Thanks all for the help

 

[Bribie G]

The great thing about partials is that when you mash the base malt you can also add the specialty steeping grains in with the mash, so it's not much more work than doing a steep. Also partials can be done with probably what you have around the house at the moment. I used a normal esky holding a water bath around 70 degrees and mixed up a 66 degree mash of up to 2 kilos of base malt plus spec. grains in a big tupperware type container and just floated it in the water bath for an hour, then strained and sparged it into a stockpot using a four dollar wire strainer from the Reject Shop.

 

[thanme]

That does make it sound pretty easy. Guess I'll probably start on it sooner rather than later then

 

[petesbrew]

All the best NME. Your planned hops sound great, and adding even a little bit of grain adds "personality" to your beer.

 

[KGB]

manticle: You're that man! That's cleared up a lot. As much as I've read about grains, a lot of it is still Greek to me That'll make my step to partials easier too.

Same here, very helpful post manticle

 

[manticle]

I went through the same confusion when starting to use grain, then with partials and then with wanting to jump to AG. Many pieces of advice from here and people taking the time to explain things clearly really helped. I've still got loads to learn and loads to figure out but without the input from a lot of people I would know half as much. Always happy to pass that little bit I do know onto someone else.

 

[Nick JD]

The Ten Easy Steps to Partials:

1.) In a 15L soup pot, bring 10L up to 70 degrees C ($10 candy thermometer) with the lid on. Start with hot tap water - it's quick as. Have 5 bath towels handy.

2.) Add a big square of Swiss Voile (from Spotlight - ask for ivory if they have no white) to your pot. The square is big enough to fill the pot and lap its edges over.

3.) Pour in 3kg of milled grain (maybe a $4 kg ale malt and some crystal malts to colour and flavour and body) slowly from a foot above the surface of the water. Using a potato masher ... mash it up to rid any lumps.

4.) Quickly add lid and pile over your bath towels. Set your stove's timer for 60 minutes. Drink a beer and sit in the sun.

5.) An hour later gather the edges of the swiss voile and tie a rope around it. Haul it out and dump it in a bucket. Squeeze it a little and pour the juices back into the pot. Turn the element on full.

6.) Boil the coffee kettle with 2L of water. Before it's fully boiling (about 70 degrees ish) pour it through the opened bag. Hang it up to drip. Repeat this twice, pouring back into the pot.

7.) When the pot hits the boil add your hop bag, set your timer for 60 minutes and scoope the foamy crap off the top. Other hop additions as necessary.

8.) Pour pot into sanitized 10L container. Squeeze out excess air and roll around to sterilize.

9.) Next day, measure SG and calculate how much extra LDME needed and top up to 23L with cold tap water.

10.) Add yeast. Partials are that easy.

:super:

 

[henderjo]

NME,

Just tucked into a few of my first K&B with steeped grain brew... in short, tooooo much grain! Still nice though - can't decide if it's too sweet or too bitter :unsure: so I'll have few more tomorrow and see if I can work it out. I bittered with hops and added 500 gms of crystal, the second one I used just 250 gms - I think that will be a lot closer to what I'm after. Thinking I might dry hop this one a little, it's sweet and bitter, but kind of lack flavour. I love this part of brewing :icon_cheers:
John.

 

[thanme]

Thanks for the input John

What recipe did you use?? I went and picked up my "propsed" ingredients today

Also, what did you do to crack the grain??

 

[Eyelusion]

I just ask my LHBS to crack the grain for me. They do it at no additional cost.

Thx all for the great info here. Sounds a little easier than 1st thought.

 

[henderjo]

Ok - NME.. here it is...

Ingredients:

Morgan's Blue Mountain Lager tin
Brew mix #15, dex/malt I'm guessing about 750/250gms
Tettnang 12gms 40 mins 6 gms 15 mins
Hallertau 12gms 30 mins 12 gms 10 mins
Amarillo 12gms 15 mins and 6 gms 5 mins and 6 gms flame out

I used crystal grain - which is already cracked and roasted, ie ready to use/steep. You can tell this by having a close look - if the grain seems 'hulled', the outer husks are separated from the soft bit inside... then it's crystal - otherwise it will be closed tight and be quite tough and hard (ie, ready to be milled). The packaging usually helps too

So I just tipped 500 gms (way too much) into about 2 lts of water at around 70 degrees C (just a pot on the stove)... I let it boil then backed it off, waited a while... until it didn't burn my finger any more (really high tec I know) and then added my grain. After 30 mins I strained it off into another pot and used that resulting liquid for my hops boil. I added about 200 gms of my brew mix (dex/malt) to the boil also - read somewhere this was a good practice?

Tipped that into the fermenter and added the tin and brew mix.

All in all it really only added 30 mins max to my brew time.

Fermented 22 lts at 16 degrees C (temp controlled fridge) with a rehydrated ale yeast from the kit, for around 8 days or so. Racked to a keg for a week at 18 degrees, then filtered via one micron to another keg. Rested for another week before gassing up.

Had a mate try it last night, he agreed bitter and sweet! next one will have around 200 gms of crystal - and I think it will be alot better.

Love to hear how your's turns out, ingredients and technique?

John.

 

[thanme]

I've got my brew day lined for the coming Sunday, and I bought a new fridge on the weekend I'm dying to try out

My proposed recipe looks like this:
2xkg Amber DME
1xkg Light DME
500g Crystal Malt
US-05

I'm not 100% sure on the hop additions yet, but it's going to be something along the lines of Nelson Sauvin for bittering with a mix of Amarillo/Cascade for flavour/armoa. I only have a little bit of the last 2 left, so I'm probably going to hop a bit more than I normally do.

Interesting that you say 500g was too much! I might have to reconsider that before I start. I'm also not sure that my crystal grain is pre-cracked, but that's mainly because the info sheet I picked up with it mentioned doing so. I got one of the 500g packs from Brewcraft. I'll check it out when I get home.

Also yeah, with adding the extract to your boil is a good practice. The idea is to get your boil gravity up to 1040, as apparently you get the best utilisation from your hops

Here's a question: How come you did your bittering addition at 40mins?? I've seen a lot of recipes do that, but I was always under the impression that 60mins was the time to do it.

 

[henderjo]

Here's a question: How come you did your bittering addition at 40mins?? I've seen a lot of recipes do that, but I was always under the impression that 60mins was the time to do it.

I could say lack of experience? Or, no reason? But at the same time... I'm really wanting to play with timing to give a fuller rounder flavour. Though I'm amazed at the lack of hop aroma in this brew. Just tried it again to tonight - and I like it more and more :icon_cheers: ... but it's not a session beer, more like a one or two and then switch to something else, which I don't mind at all.

 

[manticle]

60 mins is not a hard and fast rule. 40 mins will still give a good wack of bittering and for something using a high alpha or something you hope will showcase the malt, a 40 minute might be just the ticket. I wouldn't add my bittering addition much later though.

 

[thanme]

Cool. I'll keep that in mind and maybe play around with a slightly later hop addition, just to see the difference. Might be a worthwhile idea now I'm moving towards grain anyway. My extract beers have been lacking in body, so the bitterness has done them quite well

 

[big78sam]

Here's a question: How come you did your bittering addition at 40mins?? I've seen a lot of recipes do that, but I was always under the impression that 60mins was the time to do it.

I can't remember who posted this initially but I find this really helpful if you want an idea about how long for bittering, flavour and aroma