First Time With Grains

[Yob]

Afternoon all, Ive been playing with the Excel Kit_extract Beer Designer for a while with a view to playing with some grains for the first time. Very exciting,

wondering if Im barking up the wrong tree though..

Plan is. Kind of APA

CPA Green Tin O goop
1.5Kg blackrock LME
.4 LDME
Light Crystal 60
4 lt boil with
20g perle @ 40 min
15g cascade @ 15 min

LME and DME as indicated on spreadsheet (227 + 187)

Im I completely mad? Im still a little confused as to order of things as well, below is the plan unless Ive got it out of whack?

steep grains (70'c)
add what spreadsheet tells me following steep
boil and add hops at times indicated
add to fermenter (its here I add the goop and LME?)
chill with 10 lt fridge cooled water (6'c) + 15lt of tap water (17'c) to bring to about 22'c
pitch stepped up US-05 yaest

I would be thinking there is no point in throwing the goop into the boil right? Its already hopped etc so can go streight into fermenter with the LME as I see it...?? Does the LME need to be heated in the can also (first time with liquid malt too)

Cheers all
:icon_cheers:

 

[Pennywise]

You can add both the tins straight into the fermenter if you want, I tend to add them to the boil pot when I turn the flame out so it mix's in a bit easier. Before opening the tins stick em' both in a pot with some boiling water in it for about 15-20 mins to soften the contents. Sounds like you're on top of things to me :icon_cheers:

Edit: I assume you know not to boil the actual grain, just the sweet licquor you get from it?

 

[Yob]

So.. long day yesterday.. ended up getting it down as above pretty much... 2 things

1: It came out at 1052 at 20'c as the spreadsheet said it would.. great... however, during the steep the temp dropped more than I thought it would.. went in at 70'c then I wrapped with a few towels, bit of string round and wait.. towels off, string up bag and sparge in 5lt pot.. all good..

while that was draining I took temp and was about 55-57.. hmmm... what are the implications of this? does it mean I wont have extracted as much as I could have?

2: The brew is also somewhat darker than I had thought it was going to be..

I also pitched 2 x us-05 rehydrated packets into the fermenter, which I might add came out at 20'c.. in the end I didnt have the time nor patience to step up my culture

edit: I can easily live with both of these things as long as I'm producing a nice beer.. looking forward to tasting the results

 

[Pennywise]

When steeping, temp drop isn't really an issue. At the end of the day, you could steep in cold tap water, but you'd just need to do it for longer, like over night. I'd be really supprised if you had any issues from that at all, there's no conversion happening in a steep, you're just trying to dissolve the crystalised sugars on the grain. The color of the brew might have to do with either the slightly higher EBC of the grain you used or the length of the boil (which tends to darken the malt the longer the boil is). Souds like you had a pretty successful brey day to me, bigups :beerbang: