I have two questions...

I have been wondering about a couple of things for a while now, so I'm just going to go ahead and ask.

1.) What exactly is cold crashing, and how is it done? What exactly does it do?

2.) When steeping the specialty grains for an extract batch, does this contribute to the fermentable sugars in the wort? For instance, if I am using a program like beer calculus, the specialty grains that I put in will raise the OG. Is this right? Would I have to do a partial mash for 90 minutes to get them to contribute any sugars? How does this affect the flavor?

Thanks in advance!

darkestdays said:

I have been wondering about a couple of things for a while now, so I'm just going to go ahead and ask.

1.) What exactly is cold crashing, and how is it done? What exactly does it do?

2.) When steeping the specialty grains for an extract batch, does this contribute to the fermentable sugars in the wort? For instance, if I am using a program like beer calculus, the specialty grains that I put in will raise the OG. Is this right? Would I have to do a partial mash for 90 minutes to get them to contribute any sugars? How does this affect the flavor?

Thanks in advance!

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1) Cold crashing is cooling your beer down to near 32F. This will help to fluctuate the yeast and settle out other particals. It can also stop an active fermentation but that is not normally the purpose.

2) Steeping specialty grains will contribute to the OG. Doing a mash will contribute more sugars to the wort because you will convert additional starches but specialty grains like crystal malts have some sugar that is already converted by the process involved in the manufacturing of the grain.

The differences in flavor between steeping and mashing is subtle, I'm not sure I can give a good description as I havn't done side by side comparisons.

Craig

Cool, thanks!

Do you cold crash before going to a secondary fermenter, or is it before bottling? How long do you leave it at a cold temp?

darkestdays said:

Cool, thanks!

Do you cold crash before going to a secondary fermenter, or is it before bottling? How long do you leave it at a cold temp?

Click to expand...

I would recommend cold crashing before bottling vs. cold crashing before going to secondary, just because the racking to secondary might bring some of it back into suspension and lower the effectiveness of the cold crash. Really, though, I could see the value in doing it at both times. You can do it anytime you want, really.

Also, on the mashing and steeping note, it depends on your grain. Everything you steep is going to contribute to your OG because it puts stuff in your wort. However, unfermentables like carapils might up your OG by .002 but since they don't ferment at all, they also raise your FG by .002. Specialty grains like roasted malts, crystal malts, and carapils are more for adding flavor than fermentables, and will pretty much have the same effect if they're steeped or mashed. Remember that your hydrometer doesn't measure the amount of fermentables in the water, it measures the amount of anything in the water.

Other grains like vienna or munich malt contribute both color/flavor and fermentables. These types of grains may have an effect when steeped, but should be mashed for you to extract the fermentables out of them.