Treatment of Roasted Grain: What's Your Preference?

I'm so curious how all of you folks treat your roasted and highly kilned grains. Do you cold steep, add them in the last 10 minutes of your mash, just throw all of your grains in for the entire mash length, or something else? Please consider viewing the poll and answering whatever's closest, for fun.

The impetus for this post is that I recently received scores back from a local Dry Stout competition. I'm not a huge fan of this style and had never brewed it, traditionally at least. I received a 31, 30, and 26 from three BJCP judges. Not terrible, but one piece of feedback that all the judges gave is that my beer was slightly astringent, which I believe is the result of both not treating my very soft water and adding all of my grains at the beginning of the mash. However, the one time I tried throwing them in the last 10 minutes of the mash, on an American Stout, it resulted in a beer with very little roastiness. Your thoughts, opinions, suggestions, and whatever else are very much appreciated.

Cheers!

I guess no one else uses roasted grains

Brulosopher said:

I guess no one else uses roasted grains

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It's been less than 30 minutes since you asked.

Everybody in the pool. Honestly, while this topic seems to get repeated play here and at other forums I don't get it. I've never encountered any problem that would require the removal and separate steeping of roasted grains from the grist bill. If any commercial brewer on the planet uses such a grain separation technique I'd be very surprised.

Post your stout recipe along with water profile. That could supply some possible answers to the astringency question.

I added my roasted grains totally separate from the mash in the last stout I made. After the mash, I steeped them in the wort. It worked well for me, but I only did this because I ran out of room in my mash tun.

I've never given it much thought! But, I've never had a beer in a competition either. That being said, it does make me think about it a bit. If mashing in your darker grains gives off an astringincy or an acrid taste then why wouldn't you want to cold steep them? I've got a little free time later, I've got some chocolate malt that I'm not going to be using for anything anytime soon. I'll have to make a 'tea' from both of them and see what differences I get.

Edited: Okay, here's another question. I just saw another post regarding coffee stouts where the recipe calls for dumping already prepared coffee into the bottling bucket. Why not just mash the coffee in with everything else? Astrigincy? I'm obviously trying to draw a connection between off flavors in dark grain and coffee... Does it exist?

Brulosopher said:

. . . However, the one time I tried throwing them in the last 10 minutes of the mash, on an American Stout, it resulted in a beer with very little roastiness. . .

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That's the issue. I have brewed red ales where I wanted color but not roasty flavor from the dark grains and achieved this by adding them to the mash during sparging.

Astringency can come about in many ways - sparging too hot can lead to harshness, tannins and astringency. Too high a percentage of dark roasted malts can lead to a harshness that might be mistaken for astringency. Water chemistry can be an issue, too.

Good luck!

My last two dark beers I have gone the route of adding to the mash late in the process. Main reason was that I didn't want the acidic grains throwing my mash pH too low.

It did work out, but with some caveats. It definitely provided some roastiness, but less than I was expecting.

I have been trying to figure out what my next approach should be. I was thinking of simply upping the roast portion of the grain bill by 10-20%. Pre-steeping was something I was considering but then that's a whole other thing to pre-plan.

Curious to see if others add their thoughts.

All great responses, thanks! I'm wondering what the difference would be if I didn't change my technique, but hardened my water?

ResumeMan said:

My last two dark beers I have gone the route of adding to the mash late in the process. Main reason was that I didn't want the acidic grains throwing my mash pH too low.

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A little baking soda can go a long way to raise the pH. I added about 1g/gallon on my Courage 1914 Imperial clone, and despite a 2.75g batch containing a full pound of black patent, it was not remotely harsh.

kingwood-kid said:

A little baking soda can go a long way to raise the pH. I added about 1g/gallon on my Courage 1914 Imperial clone, and despite a 2.75g batch containing a full pound of black patent, it was not remotely harsh.

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This reminds me of something else. Being relatively new to water manipulation, I'm wondering if someone could provide the impact of different stuff on the wort pH (and other areas), particularly:

Roasted grain
Phosphoric/citric/lactic acid
Acidulated malt
Gypsum
Calcium Chloride
Baking Soda
Other stuff?

Also, feel free to go into details about when you would use the aforementioned stuff, i.e. beer types, water types, etc.

Cheers!

It helps to know your local water profile. If your water company can't/won't provide the info you need, you can mail a sample to Ward Labs. However, many water companies use multiple water sources, so the info you get may shift seasonally, part of why many people use RO water as a blank slate. I can't offer too much info on the specifics, but Martin can:
https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/water-knowledge

kingwood-kid said:

A little baking soda can go a long way to raise the pH. I added about 1g/gallon on my Courage 1914 Imperial clone, and despite a 2.75g batch containing a full pound of black patent, it was not remotely harsh.

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Well my preference is to avoid pushing the pH down excessively with one ingredient, only to then have to push it back up with another. Since my water is fairly low in alkalinity I'd rather go with a non-alkaline (and more predictable) grain bill and then add the roastiness later. I know it can be done, and I'm just looking for the best among the various available options.

ResumeMan said:

Well my preference is to avoid pushing the pH down excessively with one ingredient, only to then have to push it back up with another. Since my water is fairly low in alkalinity I'd rather go with a non-alkaline (and more predictable) grain bill and then add the roastiness later. I know it can be done, and I'm just looking for the best among the various available options.

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We are in the same boat, pal. I have a friend from my club who swears by cold steeping over night, the adding the liquor to the last 15 minutes of the boil. His process is a bit of work involving a French press, coffee filters, etc. Hmph.

Brulosopher said:

This reminds me of something else. Being relatively new to water manipulation, I'm wondering if someone could provide the impact of different stuff on the wort pH (and other areas), particularly:

Roasted grain
Phosphoric/citric/lactic acid
Acidulated malt
Gypsum
Calcium Chloride
Baking Soda
Other stuff?

Also, feel free to go into details about when you would use the aforementioned stuff, i.e. beer types, water types, etc.

Cheers!

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Here's a massive simplification:

Roasted grain: -mash pH
Phosphoric/citric/lactic acid: -mash pH
Acidulated malt: -mash pH
Gypsum: -mash pH +sulfate (enhances hop bitterness)
Calcium Chloride: -mash pH +chloride (enhances malt sweetness)
Baking Soda: +mash pH +sodium

Pale beers often require additions to lower the mash pH, while very dark beers often require additions to raise the mash pH, because the roasted grains add acidity. All this depends on the makeup of your brewing water.

Feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong; I'm still figuring this out myself.

Gavagai said:

Here's a massive simplification:

Roasted grain: -mash pH
Phosphoric/citric/lactic acid: -mash pH
Acidulated malt: -mash pH
Gypsum: -mash pH +sulfate (enhances hop bitterness)
Calcium Chloride: -mash pH +chloride (enhances malt sweetness)
Baking Soda: +mash pH +sodium

Pale beers often require additions to lower the mash pH, while very dark beers often require additions to raise the mash pH, because the roasted grains add acidity. All this depends on the makeup of your brewing water.

Feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong; I'm still figuring this out myself.

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Thanks! I've got pretty soft water, almost RO I quality, so...

BigEd said:

Everybody in the pool. Honestly, while this topic seems to get repeated play here and at other forums I don't get it. I've never encountered any problem that would require the removal and separate steeping of roasted grains from the grist bill.

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I'm with Ed. I've read a lot about separating the dark grains from the mash, but I don't know anyone who actually does it. Of course, I don't make many stouts and the ones I do, I "know" how to get what I want out of the recipes I"m familiar with.

Brulosopher said:

All great responses, thanks! I'm wondering what the difference would be if I didn't change my technique, but hardened my water?

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In short, you may need alkalinity and not "hardening" because the issue may be pH.

My tap water makes a great stout. It's the only beer I make without diluting the water or adding anything, due to the alkalinity of my water. For most other beers, I use RO water to dilute my tap water (or sometimes, use 100% RO water).

Sparging with 100% RO water works great, and lowers the risk of astrigency in the finished beer, but sometimes some adjustments are needed to the mash and/or boil kettle when using RO water.

Yooper said:

In short, you may need alkalinity and not "hardening" because the issue may be pH.

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My water pH is 8.1, usually right at 5.2 during mash on pale beers

I cold steep, the difference is night and day, a lot more chocolate notes vs roastiness.

Brulosopher said:

My water pH is 8.1, usually right at 5.2 during mash on pale beers

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What you really want to know for mash pH is alkalinity, not water pH. Then you can head on over to Brunwater or EZWater Calculator (there's lots of threads in the science forum), plug in your grain bill and it will estimate your mash pH. The authors of those spreadsheets caution that it's a model, and in the real world the results may differ some, but it should get you in the ballpark.

I'm relatively new to AG, and I'll be brewing a Nut Brown Ale this next week. I'm considering doing the cold steep method for my chocolate malt, then add that to my strike water, mostly for its PH attributes in the mash. Has anyone had any experience adding a cold steep to the mash, or know of a reason why that would be a good/bad idea?

I had always thrown it all in the mash and was surprised when I read about saving the roasted grains for the sparge or steeping in the BK as it's coming up to boil.

This might help keep the pH at the right level during the mash and the roasted grain doesn't need any conversion anyway.

I've seen cold-steeping for both grain and coffee as a way to reduce harshness, which I'm assuming is closely related to acidity. Adding at the end of the mash is often used to extract more color than flavor, although I had always thought that was what Sinamar, Carafa and Midnight Wheat were designed to do. I guess I differ from the previous posters in that I would rather weigh out 1 cent's worth of baking soda and mash everything together than deal with a separate steep or whatever. But having only tried the one method, I can't say that the others don't have their merits.

kingwood-kid said:

I've seen cold-steeping for both grain and coffee as a way to reduce harshness, which I'm assuming is closely related to acidity. Adding at the end of the mash is often used to extract more color than flavor, although I had always thought that was what Sinamar, Carafa and Midnight Wheat were designed to do. I guess I differ from the previous posters in that I would rather weigh out 1 cent's worth of baking soda and mash everything together than deal with a separate steep or whatever. But having only tried the one method, I can't say that the others don't have their merits.

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So a little sodium bicarbonate will fix the harshness? How? Hmm, I may just try that out!