Apoxbrew

Recipes 

So I brewed up a CDA the other day and as part of that beer cold steeped my dark grains. Here's my process:

1) Milled (i'm at .037) 2lbs dark chocolate malt and 3lbs of black patent malt.

2) I brought just over 2.5 gallons of water to a boil, and then let cool to ambient.

3) Put grain (in a paint strainer bag) in the pot of water and let set for 36 hours.

4) "sparged" (it was kind of a janky sparge... basically took half gallon of hot water from the tap in a pitcher, lifted the bag out of the water, and then had wife pour water over the grain).

So after absorption, I ended up with just over 2.5 gallons of wort. Crazy thing is I measured gravity and pulled a 1050!!! That's like 85% efficiency which is better than I get with a normal mash.

Just wondering what y'all think of that. Was my reading wrong perhaps or do you really get that good of efficiency with a cold steep?

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Apocalypse Brewing
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On Tap - The Tunguska Event, Cream Ale
On Tap - Devastated Sky, CDA
On Tap - Fallow Fields, Autumn Ale
On Tap - East Creek Sour Wheat, Sour Wheat Ale
Fermenting - Nothing :(

hopsalot

Recipes 

cold steep, sounds a bit like a sour mash.

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insubordinateK

Recipes 

Not surprising since you steeped for 36 hours which allows a lot of time for extraction. Then "sparged" with hot water.

gswartley

Recipes 

Will the enzymes work in cold water? I thought the water needed to be at temp for the enzymes to be active.

insubordinateK

Recipes 

There are no enzymes in chocolate and black patent. They have been destroyed by the roasting process. You are just basically making coffee.

Apoxbrew

Recipes 

i guess a tiny bit... but not really. the idea is here, really, was to extract the color and flavor from the dark grain without extracting the tannins.

i think if you did a cold steep with 2-row and/or unboiled water you may have more of a chance for infection, but from what i've read the roasting process kills most (if not all) the bugs normally found on unroasted grain.

even if i did pick up a little infection in there... at room temp it would take weeks to sour significantly (normally when i sour a wort, i'm holding it at 100 degrees).

introducing said wort back into the main boil also, obviously, kills any possibly remaining infection.

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Apocalypse Brewing
Go ahead, raise a pint and embrace the chaos...

BrewNano - Exploring Nano-Breweries, One Interview At A Time

On Tap - The Tunguska Event, Cream Ale
On Tap - Devastated Sky, CDA
On Tap - Fallow Fields, Autumn Ale
On Tap - East Creek Sour Wheat, Sour Wheat Ale
Fermenting - Nothing :(

the_bird

Recipes 

.... why are you using five pounds of heavily-roasted malts, anyway? Unless this is going to end up in like a fifteen gallon batch, that's a LOT of black malts.

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ayoungrad

Recipes 

Does anyone else have experience with cold steeping?

I've been tempted to try it but I'm not sure how to calculate a recipe.

Does cold steeping have the same potential extract as hot steeping or mashing? Daniels did experiments with hot steeping and potential extract values were lower than mashing (in How to Brew). Is cold steeping the same?

hopsalot

Recipes 

I agree, but really balck patent and choclate arent going to affect you efficiency that much

__________________
In Illa Brettanomyces Nos Fides

http://bjsbrewery.blogspot.com/

Yankeehillbrewer

Recipes 

Yes, enquiring minds wanna know

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