Calculating amount of steeping grains

A lot of the recipes I've been looking at only call for steeping small quantities of grain... I'm talking about something in the range of 5 to 20oz total. I usually adjust recipes from books before brewing... like this stout I made last winter, I ended up using probably 3 times as much steeping grain as the recipe called for... and it tasted excellent.

But for lighter beer, like hefeweizen... do you guys have any tips or rules of thumb for figuring out how much grain to steep? I'm looking to use enough to really get some nice flavor and aroma from it, but not totally throw the color off.

Specifically for a hefewiezen, you really don't need any specialty grains. A good quality wheat malt extract is all you need.

In general, though, there are guidelines for specialty grain quantities, depending on the style you are trying to make. I usually look at several different recipes before settling on quantities. Also, Ray Daniels' book Designing Great Beers is an excellent resource for formulating recipes.

Also, it's easy to go overboard with specialty grains-- restraint is usually called for, at least in my experience.

-Steve

I just look at a few recipes for the style. Using excessive specialty grains is like over-salting food; great if you like lots of salt. Not so great if you want to taste the food.