Walker, you're playing semantic games, and I don't think you really know what you're talking about. I know a lot of experienced brewers and no one would agree with your grey area argument...
Walker said:
If I take some 2-row and put it into 155°F water (1 qt for every lb of grain) and let it sit there for an hour or so, I will convert starches in the grain into sugar. It doesn't matter whether I did this in a mash tun or a kettle. I had the water (assume Ph is OK) and I had the grain and I had proper temperature.
Now, it's a matter of getting the sugar out of the grain. If I don't do anything at all to facilitate this (just remove the grain bag and let it drain) a lot of sources will state that you get about 40% efficiency (ie; 40% of the sugar was extracted).
I can stop here. This is a dirt-simple grain steep.
No, it's a mash...a half-assed mash. You are trying to generate sugars by mashing. It's a mash. We're not talking rocket science here.
Walker said:
I can go a step further by taking the grain and putting it into a strainer and slowly pouring 170°F water over it to rinse more of the sugar out.
I can stop here. Is this a steep or a mash? We are getting into a grey area if you ask me.
Well, you're wrong. It's still a mash. Seriously. No grey area, my friend. We're clearly out of your area of expertese, am I right?
Walker said:
I could strictly control the rinsing of sugar with special equipment and make it take a very long time to extract the optimal amount of sugar from the grain... up into the 70% to 80% range.
Now you would call this a mash.... or a very controlled steep and rinse.
No, it's a mash.
I feel like you're trying to get the rest of us to agree with your invented definitions of these terms. Not gonna happen. Brew for a while and you'll come to a greater understanding of these things. A mash is not a steep.
A steep does not have as a goal generating fermentable sugars. When your goal is to generate fermentable sugars, it's a mash. That's a fact, and playing word games doesn't change it. Equipment has nothing to do with it.
Grains typically used in steeps, like crystal malt, already have soluble sugar in the grain. It's almost like adding unfermentable extract. But nothing complicated. It's like tea. Other grains, like chocolate, contribute other flavors that are present and soluble without need for a mash.
Seriously, I can see you're trying to play a bit of a word game here, but you don't know what you're talking about. A steep adds some flavors to your beer and is a great way to make extract beers taste better.
A mash generates primary fermentable sugars for your beer.
Very straightforward, really.
