Steeping Dark Grains In Sparge Water?

I've heard that steeping the dark grains in porter and stout recipes rather than mashing generally results in a smoother, less harsh flavor than adding the dark grains to the mash. (This seems to be my experience - my extract porters and stouts made with steeped dark grains and amber extract have generally come out better than my all grain versions.) I'm wondering whether, to maximize flavor extraction, it makes sense to do the steeping in the sparge water rather than the collected wort. Has anyone tried this?

Batch sparging would extract tannins I would think, fly sparging may be a different story, depends on your process I suppose.

I add these grains to the mash after the mash. seems to make a big difference. my stouts came out terrible prior to using this method.

k47k said:

I add these grains to the mash after the mash. seems to make a big difference. my stouts came out terrible prior to using this method.

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This should work fine

Gordon Strong gave a talk at AHA regarding his new book, Brewing Better Beer. He had several comments about this topic ill try to boil it down. 1)Why did all grain brewers stop steeping specialty grains like extract brewers do? He uses the fresh vs end of day coffee analogy to point out harsh bittering effect of a all day heating on coffee. 2) Points out the effects of dark grains on your mash PH. "Are you adding a lot of carbonates to your mash to neutralize the acidity of dark grains?" 3) He also suggests trying cold steeping and not just adding at vorlauf, but at different times in the boil to get different effects. "Not just dark grains – any specialty grains that have no diastatic power and no significant starch to convert" I have tried it on a S English Brown. Stepped the grains in warm water (120F ish) added it to the pot half way into the boil. The resulting beer was rich with coffee/chocolate flavor, but it really cut away the harsh roasty toasty flavor. Give it a try! Oh if you are a AHA member there are links to all the talks on their website. JJ

JerseyJoe said:

Gordon Strong gave a talk at AHA regarding his new book, Brewing Better Beer. He had several comments about this topic ill try to boil it down. 1)Why did all grain brewers stop steeping specialty grains like extract brewers do? He uses the fresh vs end of day coffee analogy to point out harsh bittering effect of a all day heating on coffee. 2) Points out the effects of dark grains on your mash PH. "Are you adding a lot of carbonates to your mash to neutralize the acidity of dark grains?" 3) He also suggests trying cold steeping and not just adding at vorlauf, but at different times in the boil to get different effects. "Not just dark grains – any specialty grains that have no diastatic power and no significant starch to convert" I have tried it on a S English Brown. Stepped the grains in warm water (120F ish) added it to the pot half way into the boil. The resulting beer was rich with coffee/chocolate flavor, but it really cut away the harsh roasty toasty flavor. Give it a try! Oh if you are a AHA member there are links to all the talks on their website. JJ

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Interesting stuff Joe! I've been thinking about different ways to add the dark/roasted/specialty grains to the process and see what comes out the best for me.

I've often thought that a person could steep all the specialty grains like they do for extract batches and add to the boil as you suggested but never tried it. It would also cut down on the Calcium Carbonate additions to the mash to help bring up the PH levels to the 5.4-5.5 range.

That way a person could treat for the base malts and adjust with acid and CaCL and just add the dark grains somewhere at the end and still have the color and flavor just not the hassle of mash adjustments and bitter/harsh roastiness.

k47k said:

I add these grains to the mash after the mash. seems to make a big difference. my stouts came out terrible prior to using this method.

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So after the 60 min mash, add the dark grains and mix - then carry on as usual?

Rpwallace1 said:

So after the 60 min mash, add the dark grains and mix - then carry on as usual?

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Depends on your sparging method.

If you batch sparge, yes, add them after draining the first wort and add your sparge water. I would recommend 10 to 15 minutes, maybe even 20, before draining your sparge water to ensure you get the color and sugars from the dark grains.

If you fly sparge, then sprinkle them onto the top of the bed while beginning the draining of the mash tun and then just add your sparge water as usual.

If you mash out, you can either add them before adding the water or wait until you start sparging and follow either protocol above.

My dark brews have gotten significantly smoother since adopting the Gordon Strong methods discussed in his book. So much better.

I can't wait to brew my next stout using these techniques, something I've been meaning to do for awhile.

After reading a bunch of other posts on this topic, I've decided to make my next stout by doubling the amount of and cold-steeping the dark grains overnight, using the liquid obtained for the mash liquor. If that's successful I'll try the same procedure, adding the liquid to the boil, maybe even at flameout. After thinking about it for a while, steeping in the sparge water unnecessarily complicates things and adds one more vessel to clean. I'll post the results.

One (probably obvious) question - Cold-steeping will still extract the acids from the dark grains, right? So my PH calculations should reflect the inclusion of the dark grains? I have extremely alkaline tap water (PH 8.5!!!), so this is rather important.

I've never cold steeped before but I would think it would extract the acids just the same. Might be worthwhile to monitor the PH level at various stages and let us all know

This is kind of fascinating. I would think that there's a balancing act necessary to get the color / look and maybe the mouth feel to work out the same, but this seems like a total no brainer to me, and might make a much easier platform for the coffee stouts I need to start brewing for winter drinkin'!

TapeDeck said:

This is kind of fascinating. I would think that there's a balancing act necessary to get the color / look and maybe the mouth feel to work out the same, but this seems like a total no brainer to me, and might make a much easier platform for the coffee stouts I need to start brewing for winter drinkin'!

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Regarding mouthfeel...

Thanks to this thread, my next brew day will be a stout where I add all the roasted malts to the mash in the last 10 mins. All of my stouts so far have been decent, but lacking that smooth roast flavor, creamy head, and luxurious mouthfeel. Using the same process, my pales, ambers, and everything else give great head. I'm excited to see the impact this new process has.

Food for thought: 1. Sounds like you are reducing the time to get less extract from the dark grains. Couldn't you get the same effect by reducing the amount of dark grains?
2. Could you acheive a similar effect by reserving your dark grains and putting them in a muslin bag in the boil pot as the kettle is rising to boil temp (say put them in at 60F and pull them out at 150f)

Brulosopher said:

Regarding mouthfeel...

Thanks to this thread, my next brew day will be a stout where I add all the roasted malts to the mash in the last 10 mins. All of my stouts so far have been decent, but lacking that smooth roast flavor, creamy head, and luxurious mouthfeel. Using the same process, my pales, ambers, and everything else give great head. I'm excited to see the impact this new process has.

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What was your water profile and PH levels when doing the dark beers? Could it be possible that the dark grains could have been pulling the mash PH to too low of a level and you're getting insipid dark beers? I know when I do darker beers I have to load up the Calcium Carbonate or else use a mix of RO and my really hard tap water.

cooper said:

What was your water profile and PH levels when doing the dark beers? Could it be possible that the dark grains could have been pulling the mash PH to too low of a level and you're getting insipid dark beers? I know when I do darker beers I have to load up the Calcium Carbonate or else use a mix of RO and my really hard tap water.

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I have very soft water. I've brewed with just my water as well as mineralized water using calcium carbonate. Each time, I get similar results in terms of head retention, mouthfeel, and acridness.

Brulosopher said:

I have very soft water. I've brewed with just my water as well as mineralized water using calcium carbonate. Each time, I get similar results in terms of head retention, mouthfeel, and acridness.

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Interesting, what was your PH? And mashing around 154-156 or even higher? Calibrated the thermometer and everything? I've had that issue one time too where my thermometer was reading almost 5 degrees above what the actual temp was... not happy

cooper said:

Interesting, what was your PH? And mashing around 154-156 or even higher? Calibrated the thermometer and everything? I've had that issue one time too where my thermometer was reading almost 5 degrees above what the actual temp was... not happy

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pH: 5.2
Mash temp: 156F
Everything well calibrated

Dang, have you tried shaking a dead chicken at it??

Really interesting thread!

I'm planning on making a Vanilla Edmund Fitzgerald Porter in a couple weeks, and am considering making this adjustment.

I fly sparge, and will perform a mash-out. That said, I'm still not quite clear as to when I should add the Chocolate Malt and Roasted Barley.

It seems like it would be difficult to steep them before the mash, as it would require steeping the roasted/specialty grains in the MT, then transferring the liquor from MT to BK in order to clean out the MT, before transferring back to the MT to mash the other grains. If it's worth all that, I can try it, but I'm wondering if I could get the same result by adding the Chocolate Malt and Roasted Barley either just before starting the mash-out, or after the mash-out before I start sparging.

If I add them before the mash-out, I worry that I'll still get the harsher flavors. If I add them afterward, I'm concerned that they won't steep long enough, and I won't get the color or mouthfeel I'm aiming for.

Thoughts?

Here is a youtube video I found where he adds the dark grains at vorlauf. This is just an example of one way a person could do it.

cooper said:

Here is a youtube video I found where he adds the dark grains at vorlauf. This is just an example of one way a person could do it.

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An even easier method. He adds grain during mashout (re-circulation). I like the fact this method eliminates a muslin bag and a separate pot for the steeping in my current method. Starch conversion should be complete, your just rinsing sugars. At this point PH of the mash doesn't matter?? Less work is good! Thanks for sharing cooper!

That's right, the mash is already done and at this point you already have all your starches converted into sweet wort.

I've been wondering if steeping specialty grains separate from the main mash would give you better efficiency on really big beers. You'd reduce the sugar content of the MLT and theoretically not take such a big efficiency hit, plus you can save space in your tun for those grain bills that push your equipment to the limit.

When I bough All Grain kits I from Mid-West Supplies a few months ago, they would not separate out the steeping grains.
All grains came in one bag. maybe other Home Brew stores are different.

I've done this in a beer before with good results. I wanted to use Carafa but couldn't get any, so I soaked some black patent in three gallons of water in the fridge for 24 hours. I then used this as my sparge water. The resulting beer was plenty dark but lacked a lot of the roast character I would have gotten if I had tried to get the same color using roast barley or black patent.