voytekl
Member
- Joined
- 27/9/06
- Messages
- 13
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First post.. so hi everybody. Great board you've got here. But stop encouraging me to brew dammit! As if I have enough time!
anyhow... my problem. I've been mucking around with kits and extract and so forth for a while but am trying to develop my brewing a bit more now so am getting into steeping grains as a prelude to getting into mashing. I bought me some Crystal (Joe White 145 EBC from ESB) and whacked 250g in my last pale ale. I steeped it in a bag at 70C in my boil volume (about 10l, before anything else went in) for about 30 mins, then took it out. It did nothing apart from a little colour... ok I worked that one out it's cause I didn't crack the grains. Smart lad. Technique ok otherwise?
So last night I'm thinking I gotta find a way crack these buggers. Bodged it up using a glass jar against a hard benchtop and kept crushing them till there were no whole grains. I then made up a mini "wort" using 30g of this stuff in a litre, same technique as before just to see what happens. This should be heaps as it's equivalent to 3/4kg in a full brew, no? It did more, but still not a lot. A fair bit of colour, a little bit of astringency (i squeezed the grains a little too this time, maybe that's why? or is it my bodgy cracking?) and a bit of a watery malty taste but none of the sweetness or body everybody talks about for crystal. None at all. The gravity went up 3-4 points. Is this what I should expect? It just seems sort of pointless so I'm presuming I'm doing something wrong...
thanks for any help y'all can give me.
anyhow... my problem. I've been mucking around with kits and extract and so forth for a while but am trying to develop my brewing a bit more now so am getting into steeping grains as a prelude to getting into mashing. I bought me some Crystal (Joe White 145 EBC from ESB) and whacked 250g in my last pale ale. I steeped it in a bag at 70C in my boil volume (about 10l, before anything else went in) for about 30 mins, then took it out. It did nothing apart from a little colour... ok I worked that one out it's cause I didn't crack the grains. Smart lad. Technique ok otherwise?
So last night I'm thinking I gotta find a way crack these buggers. Bodged it up using a glass jar against a hard benchtop and kept crushing them till there were no whole grains. I then made up a mini "wort" using 30g of this stuff in a litre, same technique as before just to see what happens. This should be heaps as it's equivalent to 3/4kg in a full brew, no? It did more, but still not a lot. A fair bit of colour, a little bit of astringency (i squeezed the grains a little too this time, maybe that's why? or is it my bodgy cracking?) and a bit of a watery malty taste but none of the sweetness or body everybody talks about for crystal. None at all. The gravity went up 3-4 points. Is this what I should expect? It just seems sort of pointless so I'm presuming I'm doing something wrong...
thanks for any help y'all can give me.