How should I prepare these samples?

Hello everyone,

I am preparing myself to make the jump into AG, so I went to my local brew shop and got a bunch of 1 ounce samples of the various malts they had in stock. Anyone here have any suggestions as to how to go about preparing them as individual micro-mashes, so I can get a feel for the various characteristics of the different malts? Should I just heat some water up to temp and steep them like tea? Any suggestions would be kindly appreciated.

Thanks!

I personally like to grab a handful and give it a nice whiff. Then pop a pinch in my mouth and give the old taste buds a run. What type of grains did you pick up?

I got 1 ounce each of:

Pale Ale Malt
Maris Otter
6 Row
Bohemian Pilsner
Belgian Biscuit
10L Crystal
120L Crystal

I am looking to get a little feel for the mashing process, as well as the different flavor/color profiles of a few different malts. I have experience with the crystal malts with some extract brews I've done, so the base malts are what I'm looking at.

Well if you do decide to make teas out of them, please let us know. I like to taste the wort of every batch I brew, but I have never tasted several at a time.

There is a basic brewing video cast where they steep teas of different crystal malts. Worth taking a look for if you are thinking about doing it.

If the grains are not crushed you can use a rolling pin. crack them so they are well open and the flour is starting to appear. Set your oven to 150 to 152F. Like you said put water in each cup a little over 170 as the cup will absorb heat. Stir in the single type crushed grains at 162F. Place the cup on a cookie sheet and cover it with a deep inverted cake pan for 30 minutes to mimic mashing. Remove from the oven when done. Taste when the grain has cooled to drinking temperature. You can do this with several grains in separate cups. After you do this then you could mix grains in percentages to see the effect of multiple grains but you need a bigger container. Of course you could make a small batch of beer too. It's up to you.

Try some hop teas in cups too. This gets really interesting. It's fun and you do not need but 1 pellet in each cup.

Wow, such quick responses. Thanks for the input.

I have seen that BB podcast with the specialty grains. I thought it would be cool try that with base malts, seeing as I have no experience with them yet.

I think I'll take WBC's route and mash them in the oven. I milled them at the store, so they are good to go. I do have a small amount of hops leftover from my last batch, so I may just have to try to make some beer out of these when I'm done. Couldn't hurt, right?

When I finish, I'll post with some results.

Well, heres what happened...

I put the grains into separate glasses, and added my water, but it lost way too much heat (from 180 to about 130). I let them sit in the oven and heated them up, but was only able to hold them in a 140 to 160 range (oven only goes down to 180). I let them sit for about 30 min, then drained off the wort. Then I combined all the grains and added about 1.5 pints water to sparge. I boiled it all up with about .5oz of hallertau leafs. Then I cooled, and pitched to some yeast I had kept from an earlier batch.

It wasn't pretty, but I think this worked out OK. I could definitely tell a difference in taste between them, even though my inexperienced palate could only pick up so much.

There it is, my first all grain batch! I think it may be enough to fill up a Grolsch bottle. Should be interesting to see how it turns out. Thanks again everyone!