Late grain addition.

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Ibanous

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I was thinking about trying to brew a beer with a very pronounced honey aroma/taste. From what I've read/experienced it's more productive to use honey malt then actual honey.

I'm wondering if you lose aroma with grains as you do with hops, so that after a 90minute boil would you boil away most of the honey aroma you gain from the honey malt? Along that line I'm wondering if it's possible (advisable) to do a late grain addition. I know I wouldn't want to boil the grain itself so I'm thinking of adding a measure of honey malt at flame out and steeping it for ~10 minutes before starting my wort chiller. I figured this should be enough time and enough heat to kill off any wild yeast or bacteria on the grain, at the same time extracting the aroma from the grain that I'm looking for.

Thoughts?
 
I think you mostly just get a honey-esque flavor from honey malt- a sweetness that is like honey. I don't know that you get that much actual aroma. I'd recommend using your honey malt for the sweetness and then adding honey at flameout or at high krausen for the aroma.
 
If I add honey to a batch I add it at 30 minutes or less, any more and it's just more fermentables with no aroma.
I've heard of guys adding it to the secondary as well.
On the other hand adding grains late in a mash is capping if I'm not mistaken, and that may help if done right.
 
I wouldn't add grain post boil.

Why not? I'm not disagreeing I'm really just looking for reasons this will/won't work, or adverse effects. When I first thought of doing a grain add at flame out my first instinct was that it wouldn't work or shouldn't be done. But I couldn't think of why or any advise specifically warning against it.
 
Ibanous said:
Why not? I'm not disagreeing I'm really just looking for reasons this will/won't work, or adverse effects. When I first thought of doing a grain add at flame out my first instinct was that it wouldn't work or shouldn't be done. But I couldn't think of why or any advise specifically warning against it.

How would you sanitize the grain?
 
I was thinking about trying to brew a beer with a very pronounced honey aroma/taste. From what I've read/experienced it's more productive to use honey malt then actual honey.

I'm wondering if you lose aroma with grains as you do with hops, so that after a 90minute boil would you boil away most of the honey aroma you gain from the honey malt? Along that line I'm wondering if it's possible (advisable) to do a late grain addition. I know I wouldn't want to boil the grain itself so I'm thinking of adding a measure of honey malt at flame out and steeping it for ~10 minutes before starting my wort chiller. I figured this should be enough time and enough heat to kill off any wild yeast or bacteria on the grain, at the same time extracting the aroma from the grain that I'm looking for.

Thoughts?

Interesting, I've been thinking along these same lines for a while now, I just haven't tried it yet. Here's a thread on this subject I posted a while back:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/no-boil-pm-327386/

The general concensus seems to be a sanitation issue and/or tannin issue. In all honesty I just don't see a problem with a seperate grain steep/late liquor addition, or late grain addition as long as proper temps & times are maintained; but there are a LOT of other brewers out there with a helluva lot more experience than me who say it won't work for whatever reason.

I WILL most certainly be trying my late liquor addition next time I brew, as that's really the only way I'll find out for certain if it works or not. If you try the late grain (or similar) addition, please give us updates, I'm very interested to see if it works.
Regards, GF.
 
biochemedic said:
You really need both sorbate and metabisulfate to stabilize and backsweeten...and of course this only works if you have the ability to keg and force carb...this technique precludes bottle conditioning.

Correct.
 
The late liquor addition shouldn't really be an issue. It is sometimes recommended for grains that add little to no fermentables and that cannot self convert. I've heard of it being done with caramel malts and roast malts. I've actually done it with roast malts. I cold steeped them overnight and then added the liquor for the last 5-10 mins of the boil. It works fine.

I think the late liquor addition would be preferable to late grain additions. Why complicate matters by trying to boil and steep/mash at the same time. The temp control would be a pain I think. And I don't see what benefit there would really be over late liquor addition. If you really want to experiment, I would suggest trying to steep your honey malt by itself to make a liquor. Boil it for about 10 mins and add it in at the end of fermentation. Then wait a few days in case the beer starts to ferment again. Bottle/keg it and see what happens.
 
This should be like adding specialty grains after mash, except produced wort wont be boiled, or boiled for short time.
I dont see why it shouldn't work since specialty malt is added only for taste and aroma, not for conversion (like steeping @extract brewing). Gordon Strong in his book also mentions this technique as advantage of getting most of flavor excluding possibility of harsh tastes brown malts can sometimes produce.

I would steep it and add it few minutes before turning heat off. Actually you just need to pasteurize it so any temp. above 175 will do the job. Don"t afraid of tannins except your water is too hard so you think grains wont lower pH under 6, maybe you could use bottled water for this..
 
It's been a long time but I thought I'd report back with my results as anticlimactic as they are. I tried this adding the grains (1lb) at flame out but waiting ~15 minutes before starting wort chiller to allow for some pasteurization (I had adjusted my hop schedule to compensate for this as well). However I don't think I captured all that much honey aroma or any extra taste that I was hoping for. Conversely I the beer is clean tasting I doubt there is any infection issue nor any over tannin extraction.

All that said unfortunately the beer was a bit uninspiring and bland. Likely just a recipe issue I was counting to much on the honey flavor to through and didn't have enough else going on to back it up.
 
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