Oops, tannins!

So I brewed a sweet stout last night and figured I'd use my new Barley Crusher to crack the specialty grains, right? I did some searching on HBT and found that most people thought the factory setting of 0.39 thousandths was just fine.

It never crossed my mind that that applied to all-grain mashing and not extract steeping because I got way way to much grain dust and a ton of tanniny bits in the steep. I also used a new bag that didn't filter nearly enough so I had to spend about half an hour skimming husks out before I started the boil.

Anyway, I'm trying to RDWHAHB but I was curious if anyone has had luck aging out tannin flavors? It will probably stay in bottles till winter starts in earnest, and being as it's a sweet stout maybe I can adjust with more lactose (put in .5 lbs to start) to balance any astringent flavors I find at bottling?

i would wait until you have astringency flavors before you start tweaking. Treat the problems as they come up because for all you know there may not be astringency flavors present.

Usually it is temperature of steep which determine the tannins leached from the husks. Were you steeping above 170?

Also, how much steeping grains are we talking about? It takes a lot of husks to impart a noticable astringent or tannin-y quality to the beer.

When I first started brewing I went with Papazian's steep method where I added the grain and then brought it all the way to a boil and then removed the grain. Even with such an extreme I never noticed any husky quality to the beer, of course that was close to 20 years ago so my memory of the beers could be suspect.

EDIT: On rereading your post I really can not figure out why you believe you have tannins in your beer. All grain would be more at risk of tannins because of the volume of husks involved, not less. For me the rule of thumb I use for grain crush is , if the sparge doesn't stick then the grind was not too fine. I have never had any astringent quality from shredded husks and my crush produces a sizable amount of flour.

Yep, crushed is crushed, whether it's all-grain or extract with steeping grains. There should be some crushed (not shredded) husks, and some flour when you're done. It sounds like you got a good crush. Mine is set at .036" right now, I believe. You probably just need a finer grain bag. You'll be fine with the brew you did- a few grains in the boil won't hurt anything.

Astringency can be removed with gelatin.

But as yooper says, don't try to fix a problem until you know you have one.

dontman said:

Usually it is temperature of steep which determine the tannins leached from the husks. Were you steeping above 170?

Also, how much steeping grains are we talking about? It takes a lot of husks to impart a noticable astringent or tannin-y quality to the beer.

Click to expand...

Yea, I steeped at 175F. This was maybe a bit over 2 lbs of grains, so relatively not that much I suppose.

EDIT: On rereading your post I really can not figure out why you believe you have tannins in your beer. All grain would be more at risk of tannins because of the volume of husks involved, not less. For me the rule of thumb I use for grain crush is , if the sparge doesn't stick then the grind was not too fine. I have never had any astringent quality from shredded husks and my crush produces a sizable amount of flour.

Click to expand...

I'm not certain that I do, but there was a distinct odor that I noticed immediately. As others have advised, I'm not planning on doing anything until I see how the beer comes out, rather I was just curious how others have handled it.

Next time, try to steep at 150-155 degrees (175 degrees is too high) and use a finer mesh grain bag to contain the grain. It still should be ok.

^+1 you steeped a little high but the grain bag should have held most of the husk's when you drained it. The Husk is where tannins are produced I used to have some of the flour and a little bit of husk left in the water after steeping the grains. So any that were in there during the boil wont effect the finished product all that much.

YooperBrew said:

Next time, try to steep at 150-155 degrees (175 degrees is too high) and use a finer mesh grain bag to contain the grain. It still should be ok.

Click to expand...

Are there not enough enzymes in the specialty grains to break anything down at those temps?

david_42 said:

Astringency can be removed with gelatin.

Click to expand...

Never heard of that one? How does that work?

c0bra said:

Are there not enough enzymes in the specialty grains to break anything down at those temps?

Click to expand...

Most specialty grains are steeped (not mashed) so there aren't really any enzymes converting anyway- but at 175 degrees any enzymes that would have been available would have been denatured. That's way too high for a mash temperature, and really high even for a steeping temperature.

If you want to extract fermentables, don't go over 155 degrees. The "sweet spot" is 149-158 degrees, but in order to extract fermentables from the grain you have to have the correct type of grain, and the correct amount of water.

In order to steep grains, you can be in the 145-155 degree range without worrying too much about how much water/what type of grain.

YooperBrew said:

Most specialty grains are steeped (not mashed) so there aren't really any enzymes converting anyway- but at 175 degrees any enzymes that would have been available would have been denatured. That's way too high for a mash temperature, and really high even for a steeping temperature.

Click to expand...

Right, I meant at ~155. Unfortunately pretty much all the directions I've read, plus friends who homebrew have said to steep at about 170-175. I have no idea why. Noted for the future, though!

My thinking was that steeping at mash temperatures would essentially be identical to mashing, but I had not considered grain/water ratios. I guess with such a large volume of water everything floats about and can't really get down to business?

I find when I steep that adding the grain bag after heating the water drops it a few degrees anyway, did you monitor the temperature during the steep, or just before hand?

livErD69 said:

I find when I steep that adding the grain bag after heating the water drops it a few degrees anyway, did you monitor the temperature during the steep, or just before hand?

Click to expand...

Yea I kept it @ 175 the entire time.