Anyone add roasted/dark malts at mashout? or cold steep them?

I recently brewed a Nut Brown (Lil Sparkys) and I think I have a little problem with bitterness/astringency/harshness. Its not overly bad and the beer is 9 days old, so it might fade. Its not a pH problem since I use RO water and additions to hit the correct pH (5.25 this time). I have a meter. My mash temp was 154 and stayed there. No mashout.

I was reading up on adding certain malts later in the mash and came across a podcast by Gordon Strong where he advocates adding any malt that doesn't require mashing to be added at mashout. Upon further reading, some people are cold steeping their specialty grains for 24 hours. They then add this extract to either the end of the mash, half way through boil, end of boil, directly to fermenter, etc. Strong compares it to fresh vs old coffee. I figure this could be a potential source of the flavor I described above.

Does anyone here do this? Ive seen it more commonly on the traditional system forums. If so, which way do you do it? How has it impacted the final product? How did you adjust your salts and pH for this?

 

I did a vanilla porter where I added the dark grains for the last 15 minutes of the mash to try to ease the roastiness and let the vanilla come through more. The result was a little watery tasting at first but melded together nicely after a month or so in the bottle. It depends on the grain bill and your preferences but I think my porter would have lost too much roasted flavor if I only added the dark grains at mash out. That said, I know many people recommend it. I guess it just depends on what you are looking for. I adjust my pH with lime at the same time I add the dark grains. Not sure if you would do the same if you add during sparge.

 

Steeping roast grains does NOT solve low pH problems. It only keeps from having a low pH in the main mash. You probably have an overly low pH in the kettle and that can affect the resulting beer with a tart or acrid roastiness. Reserving the roast works really well in beers that have only a small bit of roast that is often for color. Schwartzbier and Munich Dunkel come to mind. Gordon just happened to win a NHC medal using the reserving method and he feels its the way to go. As I point out, it's only useful in a few styles.

Adding the proper amount of alkalinity to your mashing water and including all the roast grains is actually the best way in most situations. That way the kettle wort pH is kept a little higher and the resulting roast flavor is fuller and smoother. Bru'n Water helps you determine how much alkalinity you need to add to your mash to fix your problem.

 

Thanks Martin, I always enjoy reading your expertise on all this.

Had a couple questions:

1.) Since buying a pH meter I have found all my brews to be between 5.1 and 5.3. I figured this was acceptable, but would this be considered too low?

2.) My meter is a Milwaukee MW-102 and it takes a 60-90 seconds to get to that range. Is this too long to measure? Should I be taking the number that comes up after, say , 15-30 seconds? (I calibrate every use)

3.) Ive never even considered Kettle(Boil) pH. Ive always just read about mash pH. Does Kettle pH drop as the boil time goes on? If I am understanding you correctly, then my mash pH was low, or borderline low, so in turn the boil dropped it lower. I guess getting my mash ph to 5.4-5.5 range would solve this?

 

Here is my recipe and inputs/outputs from my last brew. Its a scaled down lil sparkys nut brown.

View attachment Nut Brown 1_1_XML.xml

 

I'm not so sure, I think you are asking for more complexity in your brew day by having to calculate water additions for each recipe and potentially less consistent results. I couldn't be happier with my system since I switched to using Gordon's method. Maybe it's easier if your starting from scratch with water (RO) but I don't do that currently, I'm starting with my own well water which generally seems to match up consistantly batch to batch with what the water test I sent away indicated. But, I've done many batches trying account for the whole grain bill but honestly my PH was never very consistent (swinging from 5.0-5.8), it certainly could be error on my part, it could be variance in my water or grain roast/color differences from batch to batch.

Since I moved to Gordon's method I've been able settle in on a nice simple .5ml Phosphoric addition per gallon and consistently I'm getting a mash PH of 5.2-5.5. I don't toss in my crystal or roasted grains until the last 15-20 minutes of the mash while I'm recirculating (RIMS) to raise the temp to 168. You are right that my PH going to a boil is going to be in the 4.5-5.0 range potentially (I haven't checked, I will next batch) with the withheld additions, but my understanding is this was most important for the enzymes during the mash and in fact a lower PH during the boil might improve since my protein coagulation would improve and my extracted hop bitterness might be less sharp.

Following quotes are from http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_pH_affects_brewing

On top of that, it would seem that as long as my fermented out PH didn't push me into sour beer territory having a lower PH might improve the overall flavor of the beer:

I was chasing astringency notes in my scoresheets and beers (often called "slight/moderate/faint" ) and just wasn't happy with the character I was getting out of dark beers. After the switch the astringency is gone and personally I'm finding that I'm getting a much nicer character out of the crystal/roast that more closely matches the descriptions then I ever saw before. I've used this with beers with fairly complex roast/crystal additions (Imperial Stouts) to great success. I feel like I'm getting everything I'm looking for out of those grains that don't need to be mashed without losing anything.

Brew days are easier (same basic acid addition works for almost every beer) and my results seem more consistent.

 

I'm starting to play around with this as well. My last Amber Lager I brewed had too low a predicted PH with the caramunich and brewing salts so I left them out until the last 15 min of the mash. I didn't check my PH because I ran out of calibration solution for my meter but if feel pretty confident of my prediction from Brewers Friend. I'm going to continue playing around with this and checking mash as well as kettle and final PH in future brews.

 

For me Gordon's method just makes things easy. My water is higher in alkalinity anyway and instead of trying to adjust it with RO water based on the amounts of roasty or crystal malts I have I just reserve those to the last 15 minutes of the mash and treat ALL of my brewing water with acid down to a room temp pH of 5.5-5.7 (which I would have to do anyway for my lighter color beers unless I wanted to cut it with RO water) and my beers have all tasted great.

I think the biggest takeaway is there are many great ways to reach a goal (great tasting beer) and a person should experiment and use the technique(s) which benefit them the most.

 

When should we be focusing on a pH of 5.4 or so?

If you just mash the base malt, then I would assume you would tailor you acid additions and salts for just that 60 minute mash of base malt. The pH differs throughout the mash though, and if you add roasted and crystal malts during the mashout, then the pH would change again.

Is this bad? Is it too little time (maybe 20 minutes total) to affect the final flavor? Would the resulting kettle pH be affected too much?

I posted a topic on it:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=541032

 

I wouldn't think that would be a problem for a nut brown. When are you cutting off the sparge? Should be stopping when the gravity gets to about 1.010.

 

I did a large batch (15g) of Oatmeal Stout using this method. Took my PH during the main mash ( no dark/crystal malts ) - which was 5.4.

Added the roasted grains and crystal after 60 minutes once all conversion was complete, left them in for 30 minutes. Pulled my bag, ran my sparge water through it (my BIAB can't do 15 gallons without some sparge ) and once I was done I pulled another sample from the kettle before the boil.

PH test of that one? 5.2.

Had it been in contact longer it would probably be lower, also my sparge water had no acid addition at all to bring it's PH down. I added 1/4 ml per gallon of 88% Phosphoric to the main mash water which got it's PH within range.

When I do a batch without requiring the sparge step I'll update, but for now it was interesting for me how little overall it ended up falling from the dark grains. I hit my gravity so I got everything I was looking for out of the crystal and the color is spot on.

 

My last brew (3Gal) I cold steeped 4 oz of fine grind Black Patent in the fridge for 24 hours. Simply poured off the wort and let it come to room temp before boiling the last 15 minutes, no stringent flavors.