Mashing?

What is the difference between steeping your grains and mashing?

You mash the grains to convert the starch to sugar. Specialty grains don't have any starch to convert so you just steep them to get the color and flavor from them.

They are similar, in that they both involve soaking milled malt and grains in hot water.

There is less going on with steeping. You use the steeping technique when you are brewing an extract beer and getting your fermentables from the extract. Then you steep selected grains to add flavor and color.

With mashing, you are not just extracting flavor and color, but also you are getting fermentable sugars from the grain. To do this, you are providing the conditions necessary for enzymes to be activated and convert some of the starches into sugars. This requires that a base malt such as two-row barley malt be a part of the mash and it also requires strict attention to temperature, because the enzymes are temperature specific.

Is this what you needed? Do you need more of a 'how to' or is this good?

Steeping is simply rinsing out the color, flavor, and sugars. It can take place in cold water but it works better if the water is hot because the sugars dissolve better. Mashing is taking a grain that has been malted and lightly kilned to dry it but not get it hot enough to destroy the enzymes created when it was malted. Mashing then converts the starches in the grain to sugars that the yeast can ferment. This takes place at a narrow range of temperature as different enzymes act at different temperatures. You should read www.howtobrew.com to get a better idea of what mashing is.

There isn't a black line, per se. Very roasted malts have less fermentable sugar left in them, so they are steeping grains, grains with less roast add more sugars. When you go all grain you mash everything together...BIAB also mashes them together. Adding grain gives a much more authentic beer flavor, always a good idea when extract brewing. Extract + grains is hard to differentiate from all grain when done well, with fresh LME.

So do I actually press on the grain bag with my spoon?

ThaBrewFather06 said:

So do I actually press on the grain bag with my spoon?

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You can if you want. It won't hurt anything. You'll get a little more wort out of it that way, maybe a little more color and flavor.

Cyclman said:

There isn't a black line, per se.

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The black line is conversion. Without it, you're steeping. If it takes place, you mashed.

RM-MN said:

Mashing ... converts the starches in the grain to sugars that the yeast can ferment.

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