Flaked Barley And Extract Brewing

[floydmeddler]

Hi all,

Hope you have been having a good Christmas with plenty of Home Brews! I'm planning on brewing an Irish style stout in Jan. I have all the ingredients ready to rock n' roll. Only thing is... I have read that Flaked Barley can't be used in extract brewing? I was planning on bunging it into a grain bag with the other specialty grains and steeping it at 67c for 20-30 mins. Am I doing the wrong thing here?

Cheers

Floyd

 

[buttersd70]

Never used it myself, but according to beersmith, it must be mashed, and it is not capable of converting on it's own (needs to be mashed with base grain). Beersmith advises replacing with carafoam (carapils) for extract brewing. So you can replace it, or the other option you have is to do a partial mash...

But someone more familiar with it may correct me if I'm wrong...as I said, I'm only going off what beersmith tells me here.

 

[floydmeddler]

Cheers. I found this article:

http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=52970

I've never done a partial mash before but it doesn't look too complicated. I would go for the oven option. However, would it not be handier just to put the brew pot on the hob for 60 mins at 67% instead of using an oven? Of course I will sparge too.

Thanks

Floyd

 

[buttersd70]

Several ways that you can go about it. Never seen this article before, but I have done a partial in the oven the way it says....My oven goes down to 80c on its lowest setting, so I just preheated it, turned it off, started the mash, and gave it a couple of minutes on again part way through to maintain the temperature......all the oven is really doing is getting the ambient temperature close enough to the mash temp so that the mash itself doesn't cool/heat too much either way.
You could do it directly on the hob, but you would need to stir whenever the heat is on, because it's direct heat. In the oven, it's indirect heat, and it's surrounding the pot, not just on the underside.
The article mentioned converting an esky to use as a tun....another option is to still mash in a pot, but to put that pot in a (unconverted) esky, if you have one, thats been preheated with hot water....this would give good insulation, and let the temp remain stable as well. Particularly if you put some boiling water in the esky, and then leave 65-70c water in it....so the pot is in a water bath, close to mash temp. I think BribieG did partials in a pot in an esky, and has posted details including pics.....

Partials aren't complicated at all, if you already steep grains, its basically the same. The only difference is that the quality of the crush, the temperature, and the amount of water used needs to have a little less "-ish" than for steeping. And it's held for an hour instead of 20ish minutes. And AG is the same, just on a bigger scale.

 

[floydmeddler]

Cheers Buttersd70. Will defs give this a try. Will also have a look at BribieG's post.