Mashing with base VS steeping separate

  • Thread starter bradsbrew
  • Start date
Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
B

bradsbrew

Guest
What's the thoughts on steeping specialty grains separate to mash.

Traditionally we throw all the grains together mash them all together and boil them together when doing single/double batches.

With the ability to brew 120L ( 6 cubes ) I am quite happy to have a stack of cubes with the same wort ready to ferment. However I have thought I may be able to make a base wort of say a generic pale ale,. Whilst the "base" is mashing boiling I could have different speciality grains steeping and then boiling, with hop additions, which could then be added to the different cubes before the base wort is added to the cubes.

Has anyone tried a separate specialty steep and compared with their traditional method of specialties being added to the mash? Yes I know its extra work and cleaning but there is potential to end up with 6 completely different beers from one batch. At the moment I can achieve 6 different beers by adding different hops and yeast but I do figure that different crystals and specialties will take it to another level???

Cheers
 
I haven't tried exactly what you are suggesting but I do regularly cold steep roast malts for stouts and porters and add that to the main mash and I have steeped various malts (even done minimashes), boiled and added during fermentation for various reasons (colour, flavour one dimensional, etc).

There is no reason whatsoever that what you are suggesting wouldn't work as far as I can tell.
 
I've heard of people steeping dark/heavily roasted malts for a shorter amount of time and at cooler temperatures so less of the harshness is extracted from the grains. As long as you give it a boil to sanitise I reckon it'd work a treat.

My 50L pot now seems quite small.
 
Yeah I have seen that quite a few do the cold steeping of the dark and roast malts which is why I thought this may work.
 
Would be a really interesting way to make minor adjustments to a similar brew to see the differences :D
 
When we mash crystal malts with base malt do the enzymes work on the sugars in the crystal?

The process used to make the crystal is basically a mash within the grains that is then stopped by the kilning process. But would the enzymes in a mash with base malts be able to break down the sugars in the crystal to shorter chains (depending on the temperature used for the mash)?

[edit: spelling]
 
Did this recently on my first double batch. 40L worth of pilsner mashed with fuggles for bittering and wilamette for flavour.

Half of that no chilled (aka corny no-chill) and half chilled.

The chilled part got a 200g steep of caramunich, strained and boiled separately and added to the finished wort in the fermenter. This got wlp005 British ale yeast.

The no-chilled part got saison yeast.

SABC members liked both beers and could not pick the British ale for anything but an ESB and commented heavily on the floral hops. The steeped and boiled crystal masked the undesirable part of the hops very very well. Sweetness was on the money. The saison was to style and benefited from the unmasked earthiness.

When I look at the effort of brewing and how often I do it, this or particulars would be my standard techniques hereon.
 
AndrewSA said:
When we mash crystal malts with base malt do the enzymes work on the sugars in the crystal?

The process used to make the crystal is basically a mash within the grains that is then stopped by the kilning process. But would the enzymes in a mash with base malts be able to break down the sugars in the crystal to shorter chains (depending on the temperature used for the mash)?

[edit: spelling]
Bump...

Genuine question - anyone know the answer to this?
 
I'm not the expert to answer you - but since no one else has - from the study I've done, the enzymes work on what ever sugars there are in the wort that are of the sort those enzymes work on. Crystal malts, if I remember correctly, are higher in dextrinous sugars, which are not fermentable. But the fermentable sugars in there will be broken down by the available enzymes.
 
I spent quite a while doing double batches and doing very different beers using exactly what you mention. For contrast I brewed a dubbel and an american ipa in a split batch. The ipa got alot of high alpha cube hops and the dubble got some caramunich spec b and belgian candy syrup. They both turned out very well and were perfectly suited to their style despite the common base.

On the other question about tue mash's effect on crystals unfermentable sugars. I asked the question a while ago and there werent any answers. From experience I think that some of the unfermentable sugars are simplefied in the mash. I have trouble getting higher fgs with my brewing setup but using some crystal of some sort after the mash I can get quite higher than expected. For example 400 g of carahell after the mash in a 22l batch resulted in about 3-4 gravity points higher than I would expect if I put them in the mash. Of course that is one off uncontrolled experiment but it seems consistent with other similar brews. I use it to my advantage and use it to get higher fgs in low alcohol brews such as a mild ale
 
So a double batch of no chilled ordinary bitter could turn into a batch of ordinary bitter, and then a batch of mild ale. Hmmm interesting.

I'm sure there's someone here who does the above. Adds steeped crystal/spec malts into different cubes when doing double no chill batches. Can't remember who though.

Pretty easy to steep spec/roast malts on brewday, then boil and add to the cube before filling. Very easy actually. Dark mild in one cube, then extra added pale choc and or black malt added to the second cube for 2 different milds. Or even a mild without any roasted malts in the kettle, some black malt in one cube, and some pale choc in the other. This is worth experimentation I reckon. I'm injured at present so can't really lift a double batch but when I'm better I will revisit this.
 
Mardoo said:
I'm not the expert to answer you - but since no one else has - from the study I've done, the enzymes work on what ever sugars there are in the wort that are of the sort those enzymes work on. Crystal malts, if I remember correctly, are higher in dextrinous sugars, which are not fermentable. But the fermentable sugars in there will be broken down by the available enzymes.
Enzymes break down the unfermentable starch and sugar ao if there's surplus beta in there from your base malt, I can't see why the crystal dextrins wouldn't get broken up somewhat, depending on mash time and temperature rests.
 
mje1980 said:
So a double batch of no chilled ordinary bitter could turn into a batch of ordinary bitter, and then a batch of mild ale. Hmmm interesting.

I'm sure there's someone here who does the above. Adds steeped crystal/spec malts into different cubes when doing double no chill batches. Can't remember who though.

Pretty easy to steep spec/roast malts on brewday, then boil and add to the cube before filling. Very easy actually. Dark mild in one cube, then extra added pale choc and or black malt added to the second cube for 2 different milds. Or even a mild without any roasted malts in the kettle, some black malt in one cube, and some pale choc in the other. This is worth experimentation I reckon. I'm injured at present so can't really lift a double batch but when I'm better I will revisit this.
Thats my plan. Turn a best bitter into apa, epa, mild, dark ale, stout. Even a pils/lager could get a hit of smoked/peat.

My main query is how much difference would there be in 2 beers, one mashed with specialties and one done this way using the exact same grains,hops and ratios?
 
Absolutely be a difference with say, on ordinary bitter in one cube, and the other cube hit with steeped and boiled pale choc, or black. Or, even add more crystal to one half of a bitter to see. Or add dark crystal to one cube of mild, and light crystal to the other.

I suppose of you did the above and found it made no difference, you could just go back to normal brewing, but I think it would make a difference. Obviously if the two ingredients were very similar you probably wouldn't notice a difference but you wouldn't do that anyway. Actually, if you were really fussy you could keep everything the same, but try two different brands of the same spec malt. Cara aroma vs spec b, Simpsons medium crystal vs TF medium crystal. Plenty of opportunity there for experimentation and comparison.
 
Oh, you mean two beers with the same ingredients, but one brewed as normal, and one brewed with spec malts added to the cube?.


Don't really know, I'd only do it to get two different beers, not to see the difference between the two methods in the same beer.
 
This is exactly what I do with my large setup. I make 6 22L cubes with this setup and like to vary them.

I make APA and cube hop each cube differently (eg. I have made an APA base with different 6 single hopped cubes).

I have made an english pale ale base and steeped some darker grain separately. I turned 3 cubes into a brown porter by adding the steeped grain liquid to the fermenters.

As far as a difference between the mashed version and steeped version, there may be some unconverted starches in the steeped version, depending on the grain that was steeped. I think crystal grains and some other speciality grains still have a small percentage starches that can be converted. Obviously when we steep them instead of mashing them these starches will remain unconverted. I am unsure how much difference to the flavour these starches will make, but they may impact on the storage life of the beer.
 
RelaxedBrewer said:
This is exactly what I do with my large setup. I make 6 22L cubes with this setup and like to vary them.

I make APA and cube hop each cube differently (eg. I have made an APA base with different 6 single hopped cubes)..
Wait, what? Ok, I admit to doing no research on doing cubes, but did my first no chill yesterday because I didn't want to spend the day brewing in crap weather. So I am very keen to explore it further. Reading your post, when you say you made a APA base, does that mean with bittering hops? Or is all hopping done in cube? If the latter, then that is pretty exciting, how do you calculate IBU's?
 
Back
Top