limit on steeping grains?

i had a recipe that called for about 2 lbs of steeping grains, but my local home brew guy told me something about anything over 1 lb being a waste bc the water being saturated after that. didnt make sense to me bc i could just steep w/ more water. however, i took his advice since im new to this.

is there any merit to keeping it at a lb or less? a lot of recipes i want to try require more than that.

I'm still fairly new to this but that doesn't sound right, everything I've brewed so far has had at least 2 lbs of steeping grains

Doesn't sound right to me, either. If it were me, I'd go with the recipe.

Pappers_ said:

Doesn't sound right to me, either. If it were me, I'd go with the recipe.

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I agree, and stay away from your local home brew guy.

Sugar is extremely soluble in water, especially hot water and I doubt seriously that at two pound even if you used barely enough water to cover the grains that you would reach the saturation point.

I used a little over 3 lbs. in an RIS I made this past weekend in steeped grains, and had no issue with saturation whatsoever.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only difference between steeping and mashing is the mash uses enzymes in the base malt to convert starch to sugar, whereas steeping pulls out sugars that have already been created by the roasting process. Therefore if you can mash 6 lbs of grain you can certainly steep 6 lbs in the same volume of water.

Steeping grains are just specialty grains that add only flavor and color, and have very little to do with fermentables. The vast majority of your fermentables will come from your extract in an extract recipe, which is always sugars extracted from a base malt.

In AG brewing, you typically want to limit your specialty malts to 10-15% of the total grain bill. The same would be true for extract brewing, you'd just need to do the math to convert the extract part to the comparable weight in grain, then do the same 10-15% calculation.

... and you limit to that percentage why?

william_shakes_beer said:

... and you limit to that percentage why?

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Usually, the "base" beer comes from the extract (or the base grain), while the flavor and color comes from the specialty grains. You don't have to limit specialty grains to 10-15% though- that's a new one on me!

You can use many pounds of grains in a beer without worry. Your LHBS doesn't know what he's talking about!

Wasted? Saturated? Not hardly. For a all-grain batch of session beer, you're mashing 10 lbs of grain (base malts + specialty) in around 3 gallons. So that same amount of water is more than enough for steeping several pounds of specialty grains. I'm not sure what the recipe is but if it's from a good source, just roll with it.

If you were trying to steep those grains in a half-gallon of water, maybe you'd have a problem. But, two pounds for an extract-with-grains batch is pretty common.

This is why we sparge - a lot of sugar/flavour comes from the grains ... in fact, most of it. Perhaps what the LHBS meant was 'approx' 1 lb meaning not 15 lb of roasted barley in a 5 gal batch.

B

awesome, thanks for the input guys! he was dead set on 1 lb, so im gonna push for more, and if he doesnt want the sale, then ill try another shop thats somewhat in the area.

Good move. Let us know how it works out. I've used more than 3 pounds of specialty grains in a big extract beer.