Steeping Base Malts

[Dazza_devil]

G'devinin Brewers,
I'm just browsing through Jamil and Palmer's 'Brewing Classic Styles ' for something to do and noticed they often include base malts in the steeping grains section of some of their recipes.
They suggest these need to be mashed but can be steeped,
Aromatic, Melanoidin, Biscuit, Vienna, Munich, Brown Malt, Victory, Special Roast

I intend to try a few of these out in some of my future brews. Has anyone had any experience steeping any of the above in extract recipes and what were your findings?

 

[kelbygreen]

steeping and mash is virtually the same but you steep for 30+mins and temps are not critical where you mash at a certain temp and try to hold that temp for 1 hour. the process is the same just bigger volume, longer time and more accurate temps for a mash. you add your specialty grains in your mash to as they can be steeped for how ever long you want

 

[Dazza_devil]

I think the process of mashing is quite different to steeping when it comes to base malts.
Some malts must be mashed to yield soluble extract, cara-malts will release soluble extract when steeped.
Some malts which must be mashed to give extract can be steeped to impart characteristic flavours only. I was wondering exactly what the malts previously mentioned imparted in the way of flavour and how people have used them in their extract brews.

 

[Dazza_devil]

Well these malts could add a whole new dimension to your extract brewing by adding flavours without any residual sweetness. Speciality malts tend to raise the FG of your brew whereas these base malts may not. Am I wrong?

 

[kelbygreen]

not sure boagsy am planing my first partial tomorrow using base malts and spec grains. hope a AG brewer can add I would say base would raise FG as you would substitute some of the extract for base malt (but you would have to mash properly, so not sure if you steep but a guess it would)

 

[manticle]

Some of those like vienna and munich should have enough diastatic power to convert their enzymes so if mashed in the right temperature zone they could very easily add to the OG. The ones that have no diastatc power like biscuit need to be mashed with enzymes that have surplus. Aromatic, brown malt and special roast I know nothing about. Pretty certain melanoidin can just be steeped and is not a mashing malt. Victory is often mentioned in association with biscuit but I can't comment as I've not used it.

I have heard that steeping base malt (outside the synchronous mashing temperature zone) can lead to just adding starch to the beer but I have no idea how much you might need to add to make that a reality or a problem. Because of this advice however, I stuck to spec malts for my extract beers and only started using things like biscuit when I started partial mashing.

I guess you could try making up small worts with each and testing the gravity, flavour and even fermenting in a juice bottle to guage a result.

 

[Dazza_devil]

All very interesting.
So steeping at the right temperature would avoid any starch regardless of the time frame and grain type? How much scope in temperature variation would we have?
Non Cara-Malts with no enzymes or very low diastatic power wont add any starches or noticable sugars regardless of the steeping temperature or time frame?
According to the CraftBrewer site the Melanoidin needs to be mashed but I think it has a very low diastatic power if I recall correctly from a prevoius search on the particular malt.

 

[manticle]

All very interesting.
So steeping at the right temperature would avoid any starch regardless of the time frame and grain type? How much scope in temperature variation would we have?
Non Cara-Malts with no enzymes or very low diastatic power wont add any starches or noticable sugars regardless of the steeping temperature or time frame?
According to the CraftBrewer site the Melanoidin needs to be mashed but I think it has a very low diastatic power if I recall correctly from a prevoius search on the particular malt.

Not quite sorry.

Mashing means conversion of straches to sugars. This is due to certain enzymes which are activated roughly in the region of between 60 and 70. Other enzymes are present in grain which are activated at different temperatures and do different things but the ones we are interested in in tis regard are those that make starch into sugar. Activation is a combination of temperature AND time - some suggest most sugar conversion occurs in about 20 minutes.

Therefore steeping base malts within the mashing range would, in effect, mash those malts PROVIDED they had enough diastatic power to convert. Some grains do not have sufficient diastatic power to self convert and therefore need to be mashed with other grains that have suffficient diastatic for self conversion and surplus for the extra conversion. This does need a miniumu time frame as well.

I see no reason why starch containing grains couldn't add starch to your beer regardless of diastatic power or not if they were steeped but the starched weren't converted - I'm just not sure (and I mean not sure) how much of an issue it would be with small amounts of grain. It might be no issue, it might be a big issue. General recommendations seem to be that you need to mash base malts and make sure there is DP sufficient to convert the majority of starches in grain. Even in a full mash it's unlikely you'll convert everything and not all of those have great starch haze.

However I'm suggesting the best way to find out is to take the info you have and do a small experiment with making wort (say 1-2 L) to see if you can extract sugar from a steep of each and a ferment of the results to see if you get hazy beer.

As for melanoidin - most of what I've read suggests using it in the same way you'd use crystals but I haven't used it myself and the CB website is probably a better reference than me. Try emailing weyerman's maybe?

 

[Dazza_devil]

Jamil and Palmer suggest that Kilned Malts, Roasted Malts and Kilned and Roasted Malts may be steeped but base malts that haven't been kilned may not be steeped.
I'm not sure how this will affect starch levels.

 

[Dazza_devil]

I've emailed Weyermann Malts regarding steeping their Vienna and Melanoidin Malts.
It'll be interesting to see what they say about residual starch with a 30 min steep @ 69 degrees C without any other high DP malts involved.
I might even email Dingemans and Thomas Fawcett about a couple of their malts if I get around to it.

 

[Whiteferret]

So if I get an asortment of malts some needing to be mashed and some that say steeped and I mash them all everything will be good? Just something I've thought about when contemplating goin AG

 

[manticle]

Yes you can throw your spec malts in with the base and treat them the same.

 

[glaab]

Has anyone had any experience steeping any of the above in extract recipes and what were your findings?

GDay Boagsy,
Ive just made the best bitter from page 119, it has 223g Aromatic, 223g Crystal and 113g Spec Roast [subbed with Dingemans Biscuit]. I thought it was a bit odd steeping the Aromatic and the Biscuit but I assume Zainasheff and Palmer know what theyre doing. It smells and tastes very nice but has taken 3 weeks to get down to 1016, probably the S04, I always find that stuff is slow or stalls. It stalled at 1020 and I got it started again by cranking it up to 24C. I'm gonna bottle this batch so I'll get back here in a month and let yous know how it turned out. Cheers

 

[Whiteferret]

Thanks Manticle that will speed me up to order some grains for my first AG :icon_drool2:

oops this is a Kits & Extracts thread :lol:

 

[RobboMC]

As a brewer sitting on the edge between extract and AG the way I see it is that with steeping the brewer is primarily after the flavours from the grain and would generally add the first runoff from the grains and chuck the rest away. This is how I started with grain.

Soon I started trying to calculate my efficiency, and got somewhere near 40%. Ouch, all that potential going in the bin.
That's when you start sparging and hey presto up comes the yield to somewhere near 75%.

With a proper mash the brewer is after as much of the malt potential that they can get from the grain.
In a nutshell, that's the difference between mashing and steeping.

 

[Dazza_devil]

As a brewer sitting on the edge between extract and AG the way I see it is that with steeping the brewer is primarily after the flavours from the grain and would generally add the first runoff from the grains and chuck the rest away. This is how I started with grain.

Soon I started trying to calculate my efficiency, and got somewhere near 40%. Ouch, all that potential going in the bin.
That's when you start sparging and hey presto up comes the yield to somewhere near 75%.

With a proper mash the brewer is after as much of the malt potential that they can get from the grain.
In a nutshell, that's the difference between mashing and steeping.

I know I am on the edge and enjoying every little step, learning all I can along the way.
How do you calculate your effeciency?

 

[bum]

With a proper mash the brewer is after as much of the malt potential that they can get from the grain.

Oh no! Not another one! h34r:

In a nutshell, that's the difference between mashing and steeping.

In general or do you mean only in relation to Boagsy's question about steeping base malt?

 

[Dazza_devil]

Oh no! Not another one! h34r:


In general or do you mean only in relation to Boagsy's question about steeping base malt?

I've googled and googled but it seems that there is no definite answer to steeping the particular base malts mentioned. Some say it's fine, others say you gotta include a high DP base malt to convert the starches and different answers for each grain are out there.
I'm wondering if it would be possible to do an individual easy starch test on a 30 min steep of each particular malt in question.

 

[bum]

As mentioned by Glaab above, the authors are probably respected enough to trust in the recipe - no guarantee you'll like it of course but that's not what I am getting at. They know exactly which malts require how much DP and the ins and outs of a duck's. They may not have these grains there for their contribution to OG. It may just be colour, or some flavour aspect may be extracted. Yeah, people are right when they say certain grains don't convert properly on their own but this is almost certainly taken into account in the recipe - we're not talking about a brew from the DB that only went into someone's fermenter today, you know?

 

[Dazza_devil]

I hear ya bum.
Like Glaab, I reckon I would be willing to try any of the recipes in the book with confidence and it wil be interesting to see Glaab's results.
There may be some discrepency within different brands of the particular malts which may cause problems. One way to find out I guess.

I did just receive a reply from Weyermann,

'thank you for your Email. The mash in temperature and the rests depend on the beer you want to brew. If you mash in with 69C I recommend to mash for at least 1 hour at this temperature to convert the starch into sugar and you will still have a notiveable amount of dextrines in the resulting beer. Best regards Oliver Honsel'

This was in reply to this,
It has been suggested to me that it may be possible to steep your Vienna and Melanoidin malts to impart characteristic flavours to an all extract brew.If I was to steep these grains for 30 minutes at 69 degrees Celcius would they have enough enzymes or diastatic power to convert any starch into sugars in that time frame? Would there be a noticeable amount of residual starch in my resulting beer if I was to use these grains with this particular method?

Perhaps I didn't word my question well.
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