Going to try something new for tomorrow's brew

In my first batch, I boiled the extracts in a 2 gallon concentrated boil, which I poured directly into the fermenter after cooling to around 78 degrees F, at which point I topped off the concentrated wort with 3 gallons of tap water. After reading posts and getting help from you guys on ways to get better aeration, I came up with a couple of new things I'm going to do to hopefully improve the overall quality of this batch.

First of all, I'll be steeping grains this batch. So, I was thinking about doing the boil with 2.5 to 3 gallons of water, instead of 2. I figured having the extra water would make for a more efficient steeping of the grains. Plus, with the extra time involved, I assume I'm going to lose more volume due to steam or whatever else.

Tonight, I also filled two pots with 1.25 gallons each, and boiled them. I put them both in the refrigerator, covered, to cool overnight. Having this extra cold water tomorrow should be beneficial, I think. This time, instead of adding water to the wort, I'm going to fill the fermenter with this chilled water, and splash the cooled wort into it. If I'm under 5 gallons at this point, I'll top it off with tap water, I suppose.

One quick question about steeping the grains...do I really need to sparge the grains? I mean, I know I have to remove them from the water (I have a grain bag) but do I really need to pour hot water over the grain bag? I've seen many conflicting opinions on this matter. I'm leaning towards avoiding this step, because I only have a 16 qt. brewpot, and I'd like to keep the boil below three gallons, to help with avoiding the dreaded boilovers.

greg75 said:

One quick question about steeping the grains...do I really need to sparge the grains? I mean, I know I have to remove them from the water (I have a grain bag) but do I really need to pour hot water over the grain bag? I've seen many conflicting opinions on this matter. I'm leaning towards avoiding this step, because I only have a 16 qt. brewpot, and I'd like to keep the boil below three gallons, to help with avoiding the dreaded boilovers.

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If you are just steeping roasted or crystal malts, this step is kind of optional. You'll rinse more color/flavor/non-fermentable sugars out of the grain this way, so it's sort of worth doing.

However, you definately don't need to use hot water. The hot water is used in a legitimate mash to stop enzyme activities. You won't have enzyne activities with crystal and roasted grains, so cold or tepid water is fine.

But.... it's still optional.

Since you are concerned about the volume of liquid you can always steep the grain in 1 or 1.5 gallons of water and then rinse with another 1 or 1.5 gallons to get you up to that 2.5-3.0 gallon mark.

-walker

Walker-san said:

If you are just steeping roasted or crystal malts, this step is kind of optional. You'll rinse more color/flavor/non-fermentable sugars out of the grain this way, so it's sort of worth doing.

However, you definately don't need to use hot water. The hot water is used in a legitimate mash to stop enzyme activities. You won't have enzyne activities with crystal and roasted grains, so cold or tepid water is fine.

But.... it's still optional.

Since you are concerned about the volume of liquid you can always steep the grain in 1 or 1.5 gallons of water and then rinse with another 1 or 1.5 gallons to get you up to that 2.5-3.0 gallon mark.

-walker

Click to expand...

Cool. I guess I'll change things up a bit, then. I'll do steeping with the normal two gallons, and then I'll rinse with another 1 gallon like you said. Thanks for the help!