Steeping Grains

[dhal4]

Hi guys. Im pretty new to brewing and was wondering if it would be technically possible to brew a beer from steeping, say 4kg or so of a speciality grain and 1kg of a malt extract to make up the difference. Would the brew turn out OK ?

Cheers

Dan

 

[bconnery]

Hi guys. I'm pretty new to brewing and was wondering if it would be technically possible to brew a beer from steeping, say 4kg or so of a speciality grain and 1kg of a malt extract to make up the difference. Would the brew turn out OK ?

Cheers

Dan

Yes. It's called partial mashing, or mini-mashing depending on how much grain you use, personal preference etc...

If you search around for partial mash or partial mashing, you'll get some idea of techniques etc...

I did this for a number of years before switching to All Grain...

 

[brettprevans]

are we talking about steeping or mashing. steeping (ie only 30min or less in 60-70C water) of steep grains will taste a lot differant to mashing (60min in 60-70C water) of mash grains.

Ben I reocn he's thinking steeping tstuff like crystal, carapils etc rather than just small AG batches topped up with malt extract. I could be wrong.

 

[jonocarroll]

technically possible to brew a beer from steeping, say 4kg or so of a speciality grain and 1kg of a malt extract to make up the difference. Would the brew turn out OK ?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but won't that give you very little fermentable sugar extraction, but a lot of sweetness? I thought spec malts were mainly for colour and a little sweetness (?).

 

[Pennywise]

yeah i reckon, going by most of the specs on maximum amounts to use of certain specialty malts might end up turinig out a bit wierd

 

[Renegade]

4kg of crystal will make a very black beer.

And the 20kg you would need to hit target gravity !? Well, you get the picture.

Can someone throw it into beersmith, how much crystal grain would one theoretically need to reach 1040 in 20 litres ?

 

[brettprevans]

well using the dodgy brewcraft calculator using crystal grain only you need 6kg to hit 1047. That cant be right.

 

[Pennywise]

I don't have BS at work, and haven't set up PM properly but according to Pro Mash it's exactly 4kg. That doesn't sound right? does it?

 

[manticle]

Hi guys. I'm pretty new to brewing and was wondering if it would be technically possible to brew a beer from steeping, say 4kg or so of a speciality grain and 1kg of a malt extract to make up the difference. Would the brew turn out OK ?

Cheers

Dan

As others have said - steeping specialty will only give you flavours and characters and is best done in smaller quantities. The resulting liquid has enough sweetness that I'd warrant there should be some fermentable sugars within but not enough to rely on.

However if you can steep 4 kg of specialty (ie vessel large enough and ability to maintain temperature) then you can mash 4 kg of base malt, add some specialty malts and then malt extract to the boil.

To hot steep you need hot water and grain (often soaked for 30 mins). If you use the right amount of water and maintain the temp between 65 and 70 for an hour then you can mash. Use between 2.5 and 3 times the amount of water to grain at just above 70 degrees (the grain will drop the temp a bit), hold that temp for an hour, strain into a pot then repeat (or you can slowly rinse the grain with 70 degree water). Top up the liquid with hot water and required malt extract and you will have a partial mash pre-wort. Add in a hops schedule, boil for 60 -90 minutes and Bob's your friend and relative.

Crystal is very sweet - I doubt you'd want to use more than 500g for a 23 L brew.

 

[boybrewer]

well using the dodgy brewcraft calculator using crystal grain only you need 6kg to hit 1047. That cant be right.

just put it in Beersmith and 4kg of crystal malt will give you 1.037 gravity :icon_vomit:

 

[muckanic]

I have steeped 2kg of JWM dark crystal and, contrary to popular rumour, the brew didn't turn out too sweet. The big hassle is losses to the trub, as the strained grain lets big heaps of fine sediment through that continue to drop throughout the primary. A secondary is recommended in order to keep this stuff out of the bottle/keg. One advantage of mashing large amounts of specialty grains is that the grain bed acts as a sediment trap.

BTW: Palmer warns about extracting specialty grains under too acidic conditions, but doesn't give any more detail than to suggest it results in harshness. Presumably not tannin. Anyone got more info about the thinking behind this suggestion?