scottmd06

Recipes 

if i steep a pound of lets say crystal 10L milled in a grain bag at 165 degrees in 2.5 gallons of water for 20 mins, am i mashing and getting the fermentable sugars out of the grain and into my wort?

bullinachinashop

Recipes 

When you steep crystal malts, you get flavor, color and sugar that was previously converted in the malting process. You're not actually mashing or converting anything.

Mashing requires you to hold a base malt (ie.Maris Otter) and water( 1.25qt./lb) at conversion temp of 148 to 158 degrees for the conversion time of about 1 hour.

Bull

wyzazz

Recipes 

Nope, you'd be out of the temp range for conversion & Crystal Malts don't have enough diastatic power to convert themselves. Now if you had a pound of 2-Row and a pound of C10, and you steeped/mashed at say 154F for an hour, then you'd be converting fermentable sugars.

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scottmd06

Recipes 

Ok so if Im wanting to get sugars out of the grains Im steeping, I need to pair them with a base malt in the grain bag and mash for an hour?

Yooper

Recipes 

Yes. Except for grains like crystal malt which are processed in such a way that their sugars are already available without mashing. Sort of pre-mashing in that sense.

Think of steeping specialty malts like crystal malt as making tea. The sugars and flavors are already processed for you, so you just steep it as if you are making tea. No conversion is happening.

When you use base malts, these need to be converted. Otherwise all you get out of them is starch.

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scottmd06

Recipes 

Oh ok so where does wheat stand? Is that a specialty? I steepted 1lb of wheat malt alone for a recipe and I wonder if I got any fermentable from it..

wyzazz

Recipes 

Flaked wheat has no diastatic power so it needs a base malt to convert it, a malted wheat like white/red wheat has enough diastatic power to convert itself fully and is used often as a base grain just like 2-row/6-row/pilsner.

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