Cold Steep Grains - Crazy Efficiency?

So I brewed up a CDA the other day and as part of that beer cold steeped my dark grains. Here's my process:

1) Milled (i'm at .037) 2lbs dark chocolate malt and 3lbs of black patent malt.

2) I brought just over 2.5 gallons of water to a boil, and then let cool to ambient.

3) Put grain (in a paint strainer bag) in the pot of water and let set for 36 hours.

4) "sparged" (it was kind of a janky sparge... basically took half gallon of hot water from the tap in a pitcher, lifted the bag out of the water, and then had wife pour water over the grain).

So after absorption, I ended up with just over 2.5 gallons of wort. Crazy thing is I measured gravity and pulled a 1050!!! That's like 85% efficiency which is better than I get with a normal mash.

Just wondering what y'all think of that. Was my reading wrong perhaps or do you really get that good of efficiency with a cold steep?

 

cold steep, sounds a bit like a sour mash.

 

Not surprising since you steeped for 36 hours which allows a lot of time for extraction. Then "sparged" with hot water.

 

Will the enzymes work in cold water? I thought the water needed to be at temp for the enzymes to be active.

 

There are no enzymes in chocolate and black patent. They have been destroyed by the roasting process. You are just basically making coffee.

 

i guess a tiny bit... but not really. the idea is here, really, was to extract the color and flavor from the dark grain without extracting the tannins.

i think if you did a cold steep with 2-row and/or unboiled water you may have more of a chance for infection, but from what i've read the roasting process kills most (if not all) the bugs normally found on unroasted grain.

even if i did pick up a little infection in there... at room temp it would take weeks to sour significantly (normally when i sour a wort, i'm holding it at 100 degrees).

introducing said wort back into the main boil also, obviously, kills any possibly remaining infection.

 

.... why are you using five pounds of heavily-roasted malts, anyway? Unless this is going to end up in like a fifteen gallon batch, that's a LOT of black malts.

 

Does anyone else have experience with cold steeping?

I've been tempted to try it but I'm not sure how to calculate a recipe.

Does cold steeping have the same potential extract as hot steeping or mashing? Daniels did experiments with hot steeping and potential extract values were lower than mashing (in How to Brew). Is cold steeping the same?

 

I agree, but really balck patent and choclate arent going to affect you efficiency that much

 

Yes, enquiring minds wanna know

 

in a regular mash i wouldn't have used those quantities. but since i cold steeped these, as in an entirely separate process from the regular mash, i used those amounts.

i got those figures from an article (only one i could really find) that discussed cold steeping of dark grains.

 

Actually, how did you cold steap the grain, do you just pour it into a mulisiln bag and let it sit in a few gallons of water for a day?

 

Without getting into any of the gravity calculations or anything, if the method requires you to use three or four times the amount of roasted malt than a hot steeping would..... that pretty much by definition makes it a highly INEFFICIENT process, eh?

 

LOL maybe it's the four homebrews I've had tonight, but this gave me a good chuckle, thank you!

 

exactly! which is why i was crazy surprised by the OG i got off the cold steep wort and why i posted here in the first place. the trade off is supposed to be that you don't get any of the tannins associated with dark grains. the only reason to really do this, apparently, (as far as I can tell) is for CDA's since if you had the tannins in there you'd basically have a hoppy stout rather than a CDA.

to told steep: cracked the grain, placed in bag, placed in water for 36 hours, sparged, drained, done. (see 1st post for exact process).

 

Post the rest of your recipe/process. The cold steeping method does not explain your higher than normal efficiency at all.

 

Is this like cold fusion? I bet the CIA is monitoring.

 

Did you test the wort with iodine? I'd imagine that if the enzymes weren't activated, you could have just pulled off a bunch of starch.

 

Just trying to clarify something in my own mind here. Someone correct me if I'm wrong...

From what I understand, roasted malts are comprised of barley that is malted, but then heated to much higher temperatures than other malts. This denatures any enzymes. However, it also "chars" everything, including any sugars that were present.

So, although we do gain gravity points with steeping or mashing roasted malts, they add little to no fermentable sugar. I'm not sure of the exact constituents of the contributed gravity but they are probably various carbon compounds.

Does this sound about right?

 

No, the sugars and starches are caramelized. Black patent malt is created by heating barley in very high temp drum while water is sprayed in. This is why you don't get charcoal. The higher and longer the temp the more the "caramelzation" takes place. The reason for the quotes is that black patent always just tastes like burnt toast to me, but chocolate malt really does taste like chocolate.

 

That sounds more to me like what happens with crystal malts. There is definitely some "burning" of the grain that goes on with roasted malts. But, given what you have said, maybe its only to the husk of the grain?

 

the rest of the process doesn't have anything to do with the efficiency of the cold-steeped wort because it's an entirely separate volume of wort from the main volume.

however, for those curious, here was my entire process:

Friday Night - boil 2.5 gallons of water, cool, add 5lbs dark grains, cold-steep for 36 hours.

Sunday Morning - Mash 21lbs of grain (149 for 90 minutes). Collect wort from mash as normal. Boil for 60 minutes adding hop additions at various times throughout boil. At 30 minutes, add cold-steeped wort to main wort and continue to boil for remaining 30 minutes. Cool as usual, rack to carboy, and pitch yeast.

 

i did not use iodine... so your theory is a very real possibility! thanks!!

 

So what volume of wort did you end up with? 26 lbs of grain yields ~936 potential gravity points. Divide by your volume in gallons to get a OG at ~100% efficiency. Divide your measured OG by this and you'll get a reasonable approximation of the brewhouse efficiency. If it is more than 60%, then yes this method is reasonably efficient.

 

Interesting, post your results

 

Might be interesting to find the SG of the steeped grains only, before adding it to the boil.

 

That's what he said was at 1050 in the OP.

 

This technique is discussed in Gordon Strong's book, Brewing Better Beer on page 43.

 

I was just reading Strong's book about this process. I was interested about the idea of just dumping the extract from cold steeped grains into the wort. As opposed to what the OP did by putting them into the boil. (Strong talks about this as one of the 3 methods.) The idea concerns me because of the risk of developing an infection because there is nothing to sterilize the "tea" other than the high temperature kilning that occurred however long ago...

Has anyone done this with any regularity with success, i.e. no infections?

I have been adding lysozyme to my wort and starters for a while now as extra insurance against infection. I would definitely use it in this case! I'm on ht ecusp of brewing a Nut Brown and was contemplating that cold steeping might be interesting to apply.

Chris

 

After internal debate, I decided to dump the cold steeped dark grain extract into the kettle at flame-out to help with my chilling procedure and maybe add a little disincentive to any lurking bacteria.

Worked great. I too noted that I pulled pretty good efficiency on the process, although I don't have the numbers at hand.

However, it is a real pain in the ass to calculate it through BeerSmith! Had to make a separate recipe for only the light grains, and what the hops were really doing is hard to guess - due to different volumes and sg from what it ended up as.