Don't squeeze the grain bag?

Why do some recipes say not to squeeze the grain bag after taking it out? I understand that it is bad to boil with grains because of the nasties that can come out but why not squeeze all that good flavored liquid out when done with your 30 min or whatever steeping? Also i notice that the base for most extract recipes are fairly similar. Different specialty grains get used for the diferent styles, but is 4 oz. of say chocolate malt and 4 oz of crystal etc, etc. really enough to change the whole end product? just seems really amazing that small amount of grain soaked in hot water can impart that much character!
Thanks for all your input.
I Love this site, you guys are most helpful

Squeezing the grain bag extracts lots of the tannins (nasty bitterness) out of the grains.

Plus, if you squeeze the grain bag too many times, you'll go blind!

Orpheus said:

Squeezing the grain bag extracts lots of the tannins (nasty bitterness) out of the grains.

Plus, if you squeeze the grain bag too many times, you'll go blind!

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I used to be a closet bag squeezer myself even though I knew it was a no no. Just look at all that brown malt sugar coming out I used to think. But I think the wisdom is correct in this case: Tannins suck and husks got lots and lots of tannin. Look, would you eat this stuff? Fit for horses only. Tannins cause that nasty bite on the finish and ruin the hop bitterness. Hell, if I wanted tannins I would drink wine...

Just gently sparge with 170 degree water until the grains run clear and call it a day. Sure your efficiency might suck, but we're just hombrewers. If your getting poor yeilds, just double the amount of specialty grains you use. Cost is minimal.

treehouse said:

Just gently sparge with 170 degree water until the grains run clear and call it a day. Sure your efficiency might suck, but we're just hombrewers. If your getting poor yeilds, just double the amount of specialty grains you use. Cost is minimal.

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Plus, get a large strainer and drop it in that over the collection bucket. Don't laugh and get all "no duh, Captain Obvious", that sparge water is pretty hot, and when it drops from the cheap a$$ Kmart tongs into the bucket, and splashes all over you, you'll wish you'd thought of it sooner. I always wondered how they do skin grafts....

John Palmer says to squeeze it in his book..............

JnJ said:

John Palmer says to squeeze it in his book..............

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Yep - I always squeeze. You're just getting out water that's done it's work. Can't see how that would extract tannins.

I thought you didn't want to squeeze the bag because it would force any fine grain particles out of the bag and into the wort.

The grains I got in my newb kit were pre-crushed, a lot of grain dust was in the bottom of the bag and I didn't want any of that transfering to my wort. I did use a slotted spoon though, hold the bag by the strings and slowly lift up one side and then the other. This will cause any water that is trapped at the top of the bag to flow down and through the bag.

I don't use bags at all. I just dump all grains into water and steep at 155. I then strain my grains into my bottling bucket and pour sparge water over the grains as they sit on top of the strainer. Then I use a spoon to "mush" them down and get all the liquid out. I do this about 5 or 6 times until I have no more grains in my kettle.

I always wondered the samething... I stil ldont think we have a definite answer here...

I was a bag squeezer. I mean, don't go Hulkamania on the thing, but some pressing and caressing is perfectly OK, and downright enjoyable might I add.

The answer is: some recipes say squeeze because some home brewers squeeze. Others don't. I haven't seen any hard research on it. It's one of those areas where you decide.

Different specialty grains get used for the diferent styles, but is 4 oz. of say chocolate malt and 4 oz of crystal etc, etc. really enough to change the whole end product?

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Yes it is. I have recipes that call for ONE oz. of some grains.

david_42 said:

The answer is: some recipes say squeeze because some home brewers squeeze. Others don't. I haven't seen any hard research on it. It's one of those areas where you decide.



Yes it is. I have recipes that call for ONE oz. of some grains.

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Yup. I added just one ounce of crisp black patent malt to a recent recipe and the taste is there in the finished product. Subtle, but there like I hoped it would be.

One last thought on the bag squeezing: Some beers I think are supposed to have a "husky" taste as part of their taste profile. For instance I was drinking a can of Guinness Draft (Draft. Yeah, right) the other day and the taste of grain husk was very noticable. Not unpleasant...I do sometimes wonder if the "don't squeeze the bag" thing comes down to yet another of the many homebrew superstitions. I don't do it, but I have been known to squeeze with the back of the spoon now and again. Who can resist?

I'm a bag squeezer myself... since I moved to all grain it became more difficult, but I still do it.. my beer tastes good to me and the people I share it with; although my vision is starting to dim a bit ;-)

RESURECTED!!!

Answer depends on what flavor profile you want in your beer. You will get different flavors from your steeping if you squeeze. Are you looking for the sweetness and body of non-fermentable sugars, or roasted flavors of the husk? Both?

You will get all of the sugars out of the crushed grain with steeping (provided you use an ample amount of water and time)...no need to squeeze to get out sugars. Different recipes will give different amounts of water for steeping...a carefully developed recipe will utilize the correct amount of water and the correct steeping temperature to get the profile you want/need out of the steeping process. If the recipe calls for squeezing, then squeeze.

Are your steeping grains mainly for flavor, or are they for body...mouthfeel, color, head retention? A combination of all? Brewers add steeping grains for various reasons...sometimes one reason is much more important than another...depends on the style of beer and the individual brewer's taste.

Maybe you want all the color and some roasted flavor from the husk, but none of the sweetness or body: cold steep uncrushed grain and squeeze away.

Squeezing will release tannins and other flavors...do you like tannins and other flavors in your beer? If so, squeeze away. If you don't want tannins and all the husk flavor...don't squeeze. Some brewer's don't even notice tannins...others are very wary of the flavor/bittering.

Split the batch, divide the steeping grains into equal halves...squeeze one and don't squeeze the other...this is the only way to know whether you should squeeze to get the flavor profile you seek in each particular beer you make. You may find that you want to squeeze with one style, and not squeeze with another.

Point is: it is your beer, your eyes, your nose, and your tastebuds...experiment with your process to get the beer you like to drink.

The rule of thumb for squeezing is the same as all other rules...some rules should be followed, some rules should be bent, some rules should be broken, and some rules should be ignored.

Hope this helps,
PikledBill

BTW, that is an old wive's tale...you will not go blind, no matter how much you squeeze Hell, I don't even need glasses yet.

I squeeze for my kung-fu-palms-of-fire training.

That would be an interesting beginner level side by side experiment to do.

1) No squeezing of the bag
2) Mild, gentle bag squeezing
3) Lots of squeezing

Keep everything else the same, and ferment in 1 gallon jugs (or whatever).
Maybe I can author the new BYO experiment!!

This is one of those topics that continues to be in debate.
That said, my thoughts are the 3 things that will cause tannins to be extracted from the hull are...
Bad crush, shredded hull.
Improper water PH/ oversparging.
Steeping temps in excess of 170 degrees.

Therefore, with properly crushes grains, in the right amount of water, not exceeding 170 degrees, a light squeeze will be fine and not effect the flavor in a negative way.

Bull

+1 to the pH and temps (from what I hear).

Personally, I don't really squeeze, more of a gentle caress till all the juices are out.

We need to put this, "squeezing the grain bag" rote answer, brewer's myth aside., It is not true.

There's no reason not to squeeze.....that's another old brewer's myth that has been misunderstood...and has been shot down..But if often just get's repeated as ROTE without anyone stopping to look beyond the just repeating the warning...

Read this https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/do-you-squeeze-bag-biab-177051/?highlight=squeeze

And this.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/squeezing-grain-bag-bad-175179/?highlight=squeeze

From Aussie Homebrewer.com

Tannins And Astringency

If you are worried about squeezing your bag too much or crushing too fine, relax! Astringent beers do not come from finely crushed or squeezed husks but come rather from a combination of high temperatures and high pH. These conditions pull the polyhenols out of the husk. The higher your pH and the higher temperature you expose your grain to, the worse the problem becomes. Any brewer, traditional or BIAB, should never let these conditions arrive. If you do allow these conditions to arrive, then you will find yourself in exactly the same position as a traditional brewer. Many commercial breweries actually hammer mill their grain to powder for use in mash filter systems because they have control of their pH and temperatures. This control (and obviously expensive complex equipment) allows them non-astringent beers and “into kettle,” efficiencies of over 100%.

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As long as you keep your steeping temps below 170, you won't be producing those supposed tannins that folks blindly say you would be squeezing out.

1) If your PH is off, or your steeping/mashing temp is above 170, your beer will extract tanins from the husks whether you squeeze or not

2) If your PH is ok, and your temps were below 170, squeeze away!

There's been some tests that have disproved the whole "don't squeeze the grain bag, because you will leech tannins" idea. I think there's even been a couple experiments on here detailed in threads. I think it's been pretty well shot down as one of those "old school" beliefs, that turn out to have little effect.

In fact if you are doing AG "Brew in a Bag" you are encouraged to squeeze the grain bag. They even showed it on basic brewing recently, the took a ladder with a hook attached, hung the grain bag, and twisted the hell out of it to drain every ounce of precious wort out of bag of grain.

This should launch as an mp-4

http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbv01-16-10cornpils.mp4

So is that's the case, that it is "OK" to do in AG Brew in the bag, then why would it really be bad in extract with grains brewing?

I wouldn't worry about it.

From BYO, MR Wizard;

The two most influential factors affecting the extraction of tannins from malt into wort are pH and temperature. All-grain brewers are very careful not to allow wort pH to reach more than about pH 6 during sparging because tannin extraction increases with pH. In all-grain brewing wort pH typically rises during the last stages of wort collection and is one of the factors letting the brewer know that wort collection should be stopped.....

Temperature also affects tannin extraction. This relationship is pretty simple. If you don’t want to run the risk of getting too much tannin in your wort, keep the temperature just below 170° F.

This is where the answer to your last question begins. You ask whether steeping and sparging released "unwanted tannins" in your beer. For starters, all beer contains tannins. Some tannins are implicated in haze and some lend astringent flavors to beer.

The type most homebrewers are concerned about are those affecting flavor. In any case, it is up to the brewer to decide if the level of tannins in their beer is too high. The (in)famous decoction mash is frequently recommended when a brewer is in search of more malt flavor. Decoction mashes boil malt and — among analytical brewers who are not afraid of rocking the boat with unpopular ideas — are known to increase the astringent character associated with tannins. In general I wouldn’t consider 170° F dangerously high with respect to tannin extraction. However, if you believe your beers may suffer because of too much astringency, consider adjusting your steep pH and lowering the temperature a few degrees.

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So should we check the PH of our water??? Do we do it pre-heat or after it's heated? What should the PH be is it different for different beers? And if it is off how do we fix it?

treehouse said:

Look, would you eat this stuff? Fit for horses only.

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I actually have a spoonfull or two of the spent grains every brew. I get a better idea of where my beer actually comes from.

And I agree with Revvy. This is a myth.

akthor said:

So should we check the PH of our water??? Do we do it pre-heat or after it's heated? What should the PH be is it different for different beers? And if it is off how do we fix it?

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You can, or you can really just not worry about it. In most normal brewing situations you're not going to have a ph issue. Plenty of folks have been making great beers for decades without the use of ph strips, meters, whatever. Just doing their thing, and not extracting tannins in the normal course of things.

It's another thing I just don't choose to stress about. And yet my beers manage to turn out fine.

If you are sparging the correct amount for your recipe, your ph shouldn't fall into the danger zone. If you are suing software that tells you to mash and sparge to a pre-boil gravity of 7.5 gallons, don't take 10 gallons. It's really that simple in a lot of ways.

We can look for bogeymen under our beds or we can remember that beer has been brewed forever, sometimes with little or no understanding of the process, and in some rudimentary situations, and long before incessant internet discussions of every minutia of the process.

Here's something else to consider, that throws another monkey wrench into the equation.

Many of us boil our grains when we do decoction mashing....I'll share with you the answer that 2 of us gave to someone who posted the exact same question a couple weeks ago.

pjj2ba said:

As long as your pH was in the proper range, you won't have extracted any tannins. What you did was sort of the equivalent of doing a decoction. Heck I made a beer where I boiled ALL of my grains (9 lbs worth) and then drained to a fermenter. No tannins in the final product.

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Revvy said:

I was just going to bring up the decoction analogy as well. I just did that in my Barleywine, boiled up several gallons of my grains and wort and added it back to my mash after boiling for 15-20 minutes. As we neared the end of the 60 minute mash I pulled out a couple gallons of mash and brought it to a boil for about 10 minutes as a decoction which we then used as a mashout. The stuff was like porridge. (It was so think that it was difficult to clean the pitched I had used to get it out of the tun hours later, it was like a thick sugar glaze.)

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I just tasted my Barleywine, there were no tannins to be found.

Yeah I do the BIAB too and I've been squeezing and twisting the crap out of the bag for several batches now and I haven't had any problems with tannins.

Commercial mash filters squeeze the 'bag' on an enormous scale to increase extract yield.

I squeeze never notice tannins, I can only imagine it affecting the taste if you crushed up the husks so much that they filtered out of the grain bag and you saw the gigantic mess of them and just let them sit during your hour boil.

All,

Sorry about the very long post, and about the technical stuff…no answers in here, only questions that probably belong in a more advanced brewing thread. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff in here is somewhat “theoretical”. And, all beer has tannins in it…all beer has some tannin from both hops and barley.

I think the question is whether the beer has tannins that are excessive to an individual’s taste buds. I very much enjoy very bitter strong dark roasted coffee…others that work with me cannot stand the bitterness and strength, so they dilute it (I cry just a little when I see them do it). Just making a point about individual tastes…where is the individual's cutoff for too strong, versus just strong enough, versus too weak in flavors we find appealing and/or repulsive??

Revvy gives the facts...and the main objective idea to not make things too complicated:rockin:. I guarantee you that 300 years ago, experienced brewers in Germany were making great beer without checking pH…but I also can guarantee you that now, nearly every one of them do. Is the beer any better now than it was then…I dunno.

How many beginning home brewers actually check the pH of their wort? My guess is few until they have numerous batches under their belt - if my own approach to brewing for the first couple of years is any indication...I never checked my pH.

Was my pH too high and hence would extract more tannins if I squeeze too much and crush too finely (BTW, what is "too fine" to a beginning brewer in an uncontrolled kitchen environment...and not a large well controlled microbrewery)? Was the combination of pH and temperature enough to extract more tannin-derived flavors from the grain than what I personally enjoy? I don't know, because I never checked the pH of my steeping water with grains...I am guessing that many (most) beginning extract brewers that use steeping grains do not check the pH. Thus, split-batch experimentation is the answer if you are not prepared to delve deeply into the question just yet.

Tannin extraction is a time-dependent phenomenon, and a function of pH, temperature, crushed hull size (affecting surface area and hull density), water chemistry, solute volume...etc; there are multiple interlacing extraction/solubility curves associated with this problem...how do you deal with all of this as a beginning brewer? Answer: Follow a simple but incomplete rule – when in doubt, don't squeeze.

For many beginning brewers, pH (and terms like "tannin" or "polyphenol" or "oxidizable polyphenols") is a "black box" and the squeeze or don't squeeze issue is real. So, understanding the gross/global difference between the effects of "to squeeze or not to squeeze" may make a difference in the flavor of your beer. Run the experiment and decide for yourself…I would like to see the results of a bunch of different beginner brewer’s experiments regarding this issue…I throw down the gauntlet…I triple-dog-dare all of you. Have fun with it.

I can tell you that I have done the batch splitting squeeze/don’t squeeze experiment, and I noticed a difference in the flavor profile of my beer…However, I readily admit this was not an unbiased blind scientific study, as I was actually looking for the differences. Maybe I simply found what I was looking for because I was convinced it was there (this is a well established phenomenon associated with experimentation in general).

Experienced brewers should immediately realize the "never boil your grains" rule is BS on some level...as Revvy pointed out, decoction is proof in itself. But, experienced brewers know the real deal with at least some of the trade-offs involved in certain procedures. So, vorlauf, pH check, temperature range, stopping sparge when SG drops to 1.008 - 1.012, rapid wort cooling...all of this is standard practice for many experienced brewers to address astringency-causing tannins...but the squeeze/don't squeeze issue is an issue of the beginning beer brewer.

By the way, if we are supposed to stop sparging when the SG reaches 1.008-1.012, wouldn’t squeezing the grain bed (as suggested in the linked threads), negate this procedure? Just another indication of conflicting ideas with no resolution?

My guess is that the "rule of thumb" don't squeeze your grains arose because of the pH issue - most new brewers don't check pH, or don’t always enact other important procedures meant to reduce the final ppm of astringency-producing categories of polyphenols. Thus, the "don't squeeze" idea may have originated due to the fact that trying to explain the effects of pH and tannin extraction is simply too complex for new brewers (and let's face it...it would make an already intimidating process even more intimidating).

Sugars are much more soluble than complex oligomeric polyphenols that contribute to astringency…sugars will leave the grain much more quickly…squeezing the grain to remove sugars is not necessary…but squeezing will remove the water that is left “soaked up” into the grain hulls…water that may have a high concentration of partially soluble tannins. Those additional tannins will get into the wort…whether they are still in the wort after boiling and rapid cooling…is another question. If they do remain in the cooled wort - whether a brewer can taste the difference in their beer or not, may be an individual-level determination.

Revvy, your response in post #22 (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/squeezing-grain-bag-bad-175179/index3.html) suggests the problem…there are too many variables to actually know the accuracy of the information. BIAB website cites Dan Walker as the source…where did he get the information? I don’t doubt his expertise in brewing, but where did he get the original information?

This whole issue smacks of many I have seen before…the results of single experiment in a controlled laboratory are interpreted to apply across a broad spectrum of environmental conditions. One/two well respected person/people suggests a conclusion to the issue at hand, and everyone else adopts the suggestion as fact. This is a common occurrence in science research. I have no idea from where the original source(s) of squeeze/don’t squeeze hails.

I am not saying either conclusion is wrong…I am suggesting that there is not enough evidence to draw a certain conclusion. I don’t know that I agree that this is a dead-horse issue mercilessly beat into the ground.

I have not seen curves describing the temperature/pH relationship…and the additional effects of pressure on the system. Some proteins that are in meta-stable conformations can be easily denatured by slight increases in pressure…is this effect apparent with tannin oligomerization/extraction also??? I have no answers for this, only questions. I am not pretending to know all about this…I have many, many questions also. I probably know just enough to ask strange questions.

A quick perusal of “Secrets from the Master Brewers” Higgins, Kilgore, Hertlein, will show that even the “Masters” don’t always agree on cause/effect, and/or best practice procedures. One brewer's squeeze of trash, may be another brewer's squeeze of treasure.

Any comments on all of this from anyone else?

Cheers,
PikledBill

Good point Pickledbill with the black box approach. Sometimes initially to things it is like you are a monkey and the bag,pH etc is a complex machine we will call a handgun. If you squeeze on it maybe nothing could happen, maybe you could get a fun bang out of it or maybe, unlikely, but maybe it will shoot you in the face, but that is true of many things in the process yet usually the monkey does not get shot in the face ... I'm just sayin'

If anyone is still interested...just found this: bag squeeze experiment thread

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/bag-squeeze-experiment-102859/

Initial results on last page of thread.

Note the ingredients list: this is a lot of 40L for 1lb DME...low hops for 2 gallons of beer (IMHO)…but all in all, a good start.:rockin:
1 lb Gold DME
1 lb Caramel 40L
0.25 oz Fuggle 4.6% @ 60 min
1 pkt Nottingham Dry Ale Yeast

I have to admit, I had a little bit of trouble following the procedure as outlined.

Caution: this experiment represents only one “style” of beer...the flavor profile could be much less noticable in other styles...or, much worse. Also, this represents only one type of steeping grain. Other grains are more/less roasted (lighter or darker) than 40L. Many recipes call for a more complex mixture of steeping grains (i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5 different grains). I think the results will be much different for say crystal 20L (very light roast)…and chocolate malt (<300L, very dark). NOTE: L = “lovibond” a measure of darkness (color). In a differently hopped beer (more/less hops), the difference in flavor may be more or less pronounced.

I still encourage evryone to try the experiment (with your own recipe)...the more "different" types of recipes, and more different taste buds get involved, the more useful the data will be.

If anyone is interested in getting involved with this, I will try to get a sticky thread where everyone can post the recipe, procedure, and personal tasting results. Blind triangle would be nice…but in reality, your own taste-buds are what really matters to your own beer.

Cheers,
PikledBill