Steep in a separate pot - any downsides?

[Shoegaze99]

Extract brewer here. As I bring my boil kettle up to temperature, I steep my specialty grains in a separate pot. I then transfer the resulting grain "tea" over to the boil kettle. I started doing this to save time. Since my stove was very slow to get the water up to temp, doing this side-by-side cut upwards of 30-45 minutes from my brew day. (I now use an outdoor burner, but still do a separate steep pot.)

Any reason why I shouldn't do this?

The question came to mind yesterday when brewing an imperial stout. My OG was well off the mark (1.092 when 1.12 was expected according to hopville). Wondering if maybe steeping in that smaller vessel, usually with about a gallon of water, means I'm pulling less of the good stuff from those specialty grains.

 

[Brak23]

I used to do speciality grains in a separate pot with no issues.

I have always done a gallon per pound of specialty grains.

However, steeping grains typically, from what the guys here told me, don't increase or decrease the gravity much at all. Because they mainly add color and some flavor profile to the beer, not actual fermentable sugars. The gravity is dependent on the amount of DME or LME you use. What was your recipe?

 

[Shoegaze99]

Don't have the full recipe here in front of me. IIRC, it was 4.5 quarts (or 13.5 pounds) of LME, dark and pale, and roughly three pounds of specialty grains (black, chocolate, aromatic, caramunic).

The off OG may be from the slight top not being fully stirred into the wort. Had to top off about a half-gallon.

 

[Brak23]

Yeah thats a lot of extract! you should be ok.

That top-off is probably the issue with your gravity reading. Did you Aerate your wort before you pitched?

 

[AdamPag]

That's how I do it man, never an issue. I wash the grain bag in the kettle and then pour over from the other pot and top off to 3 gallons

 

[Shoegaze99]

Yes, very thorough aeration. I'm a shaker. In this case that sucker got a good 10-15 minutes of shaking. Pitched yesterday at around 3 pm, by the top I got up to go to work it was gurgling along nicely.

 

[helibrewer]

I routinely steep in a seperate pot, 1.5 quarts per pound and steep at 154-156F for 30 min. I treat it just like a partial mash of base grain, that way my process is consistant. I even batch sparge it with the same water quantity heated to 155.

 

[Shoegaze99]

Good to know others do this and get good results. Thanks. I've done it for my last dozen or so batches and have generally had good beer, but wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something or shortchanging my beer.

Thanks!

 

[helibrewer]

I also dissolve all of my extract in a seperate pot of warm water...I am paranoid about scorching and want to make sure every thing is in solution before I fire up the kettle...especially with LME.