I started steeping my grains too early

[StrongBad42]

I wasn't even thinking and I put the grains in the pot when it was at about 100 degrees. Its been about 20 minutes and the water is at about 145. How should I go about finishing the steeping?

 

[kh54s10]

I have used that method and reached target after 20 minutes but I have also seen recipes that steep for 30 minutes. I would go longer and get closer to the final temperature. Many people get the water to the right temperature then try to hold it there. I don't think the time or temperature is entirely critical.

 

[atreid]

Make it rise to your target temperature and start counting your steeping time from there. It doesn't matter if you steep longer.

It would matter more if you had boiled it because of possible tanins release.

 

[BigRob]

Think of it like adding sugar to your tea or coffee, adding it at a low temp means it will take a little longer to dissolve. Best course of action is to just ignore that you added it early, steep at the temperature called for in the recipe, for the duration called for, and you wont have issues.

 

[StrongBad42]

Thanks guys, target temp is 150 for 30 min. I'll shoot for that.

 

[brewkinger]

think of it like adding sugar to your tea or coffee, adding it at a low temp means it will take a little longer to dissolve. Best course of action is to just ignore that you added it early, steep at the temperature called for in the recipe, for the duration called for, and you wont have issues.

+1
I even bring them up to 170 ish for the last couple minutes, kinda mini mash out.
Just my .02

 

[neo71665]

Remember, guys were making this stuff long before hydrometers or thermometers were ever invented.

 

[fizgig]

A lot of kits tell you to throw your grain bag in at the beginning and take it out when the temp hits 170 on the way to the boil, NABD how you steep, you're just dissolving sugars and trying to get it out of all the little pockets in the husks.

 

[KepowOb]

I've seen a number of recipes that call for putting in your steeping grains when you start heating your water, and to take them out when you get to 170. I like steeping for a set amount of time because it seems more precise, but obviously steeping is far from an exact science. As has already been mentioned, keeping them under 170 is the most important.

 

[BigFloyd]

I guess that I've gotten lazy. I used to get the water to 155*F, put the grain bag in and try to maintain the temp 30 minutes.

Now I just put it in while the water is warming, run it up to 160-ish, turn the fire off, cover and let it sit another 20 minutes or so. I still do drain, squeeze and sparge with some 170* water to get out all of the goodness I can.

Since steeping grains is pretty much like making tea, either way works fine.

 

[woozy]

A lot of kits tell you to throw your grain bag in at the beginning and take it out when the temp hits 170 on the way to the boil, NABD how you steep, you're just dissolving sugars and trying to get it out of all the little pockets in the husks.

That's how I do it. It saves time and makes me feel... I dunno... Like the process is fluid.

 

[RM-MN]

The steeping temperature isn't critical but it is good practice to bring the temperature to the mid 150's as that is the temperature needed for mashing if you should decide to go all grain. If you do go all grain, getting to temp and keeping it there will be normal for you.

 

[kombat]

Remember, guys were making this stuff long before hydrometers or thermometers were ever invented.

Do you think it tasted as good as today's beer?

From the beer history books I've read, their batches were cloudy, undercarbonated, inconsistent, and regularly contaminated with brett and pedi.

I think if you could take a typical beer drinker from 1850 and time-warp him to today and serve him a cold glass of SNPA, his head would explode.

 

[woozy]

The steeping temperature isn't critical but it is good practice to bring the temperature to the mid 150's as that is the temperature needed for mashing if you should decide to go all grain. If you do go all grain, getting to temp and keeping it there will be normal for you.

Interesting point. I never thought of steeping grains and mashing as being at all similar or related. But I suppose they are a bit like making tea and making coffee being similar and related...

 

[woozy]

Remember, guys were making this stuff long before hydrometers or thermometers were ever invented.

Do you think it tasted as good as today's beer?

Well, to play devil's advocate, they weren't using steeping grains and extracts either.

But to get back to the point, this is beer; not rocket science. Or maybe it is rocket science. There's a reason we do things. We mash to cause starches to convert to sugar. That requires temp control and is pretty advanced chemistry. The sugar in steeping grains is negligible. We steep to extrude color and flavor. Anyone who has ever made iced tea or sun tea knows temperature control is pretty dang flexible for that.

 

[BinghamtonEd]

I think if you could take a typical beer drinker from 1850 and time-warp him to today and serve him a cold glass of SNPA, his head would explode.

Once time travel is perfected to the point where it doesn't cause one's head to explode in the process, I'm sure he'd love that beer.

 

[mendlerr]

My opinion may not matter as a new brewer but this is what I have been doing and it works for me. Granted I am doing all-grain mostly with only one partial mash.

To begin, I heat a few gallons of sparging water to 175 degrees. I then put this water into a 5 gallon IGLOO cooler from lowes hardware. I then heat my grain water to 160, add the grains (without a bag). I stir the grains in slowly making sure no clumps develop until I get an oatmeal consistancy. Your recipe will vary greatly on water!. I then remove my pot from heat and cover, the temp should reduce to 150 pretty quickly. I stir it about every 10 minutes. I make sure to "mash" for no less then 60 minutes. Usually after 45 minutes the mash cools to 144 degrees or so. I heat it back to 150 and leave it. This completely depends on how much water your recipe calls for.

After 60 minutes I mash out by constantly stirring and heating to exactly 170 degrees. I use a sparging bag in my 6.5 gallons bottling bucket and pour the mash into the bucket.. I remove the grains and check the level of wort I have collected. I add the heated water from the IGLOO (temps should be 170 by now) until I have the proper amount of wort. I then pour the wort into another bucket and recirculate it through the grains at least twice if not more. You would be amazed at the difference in sugar in the grains after doing this.

If I only circulate the collected wort through the mash grains once, the grains are very sweet if you take a bite. After the 3rd or 4th recirculation the grain is no longer sweet and very bland. I am positive this means I am utilizing more sugars out of the grains.

I also have an advanced brewing book in PDF form I have been reading and they dive into some pretty serious science on grain steeping and mashing. To be honest I do not understand much of it. The most important point I have taken is that above 170 degrees the grains release unfermentable sugars which MAY cause off flavors and incomplete fermentation. Too low of a temp, below 144 and the grains simply do not release any sugars.

I am new to brewing, if I got it wrong please let me know. I'm still learning for sure!

 

[woozy]

My opinion may not matter as a new brewer but this is what I have been doing and it works for me. Granted I am doing all-grain mostly with only one partial mash.
...

I am new to brewing, if I got it wrong please let me know. I'm still learning for sure!

That sounds really good. You've got mashing all grain down pretty well.

But we're not talking about all-grain at all. We're talking about extract with specialty grains. So we aren't talking mashing; we're talking steeping. It's an entirely different (and far simpler and far less critical) process.

It's more like... it's hard to come with an analogy... hot chocolate. Bear with me... I'm going to take big veers away from reality. Let's suppose the are one group of people who prepare chocolate. They pick the beans and process them and as they process them they include and infuse vanilla, or not, or cardamon or chili pepper. Depends on the recipe. The add the vanilla and/or cardamon and/or chili peppers into with the cocoa beans and do... whatever... with it to make chocolate and then use the chocolate in dishes.
Now lets suppose there are people miles away who want to make the chocolate dishes but they don't have any cocoa beans. What the have are bars of chocolate that have been made from the cocoa beans. But this is *only* chocolate. No vanilla. No cardamon. No chilli peppers. They have vanilla, cardamon and chilli peppers but only separately. They can't make the chocolate the way the other people did. So they melt the chocolate and add the vanilla, cardamon, etc. to it and then make the chocolate dish.

So steeping grains is like that. We get all sugar from the extract. What we don't get though is the flavor and color that mixing the specialty grains to the base grains would have given us. So we have to extract the flavors and colors from the specialty grains somehow. So we make a tea by soaking the grains in warm water. Since we aren't trying to get any sugar (we have all the sugar we need) we don't need to follow *any* of the specifications for mashing. We only need to follow the specifications for making "grain tea". And those specifications are soak in warm water (doesn't matter how warm) for some time (doesn't matter how long) but don't go over 180 degrees because harsh tasting tanins may leech out (which will *not* kill you and make you die; it'll make your beer have a harsh bite to it).

 

[mendlerr]

that is a really good explanation. i wasnt thinking that the extract would have plenty of sugar. thanks for that

 

[kombat]

We mash to cause starches to convert to sugar. The sugar in steeping grains is negligible.

This brings up a point that I've always been a little bit confused about. I thought that "steeping grains" (i.e., any grains other than base grains) actually DO contain sugars, it's just that they've already been converted during kilning instead of mashing.

That is, something like, say, Crystal 60 has been heated to the point where its starches caramelized into sugars such that there's nothing left for the starch->sugar enzymes to do.

That said, I've also often seen specialty grains referred to as "unfermentables." But if there's indeed sugar in crystal malts, why wouldn't they be fermentable? Or is the "unfermentable" term usually reserved for grains that really don't contain any sugars (whether because they were never actually malted, such as flaked wheat or rye, or they've been kilned so hot that the sugars were basically charred out of existence, such as chocolate malt or Carafa).

What's the real deal?

 

[woozy]

They *do* contain sugar and they *are* fermentable and you might (or might not) extract some of them through steeping.

But the amount you extract through steeping isn't significant and the purpose of steeping isn't for the sugars. Mashing? In mashing you extract the sugars from the specialty grains and you work it into you calculations.

Um... I think.

I'm not sure how rigorously "unfermentable" is used and to what. I'm pretty sure specialty grain sugars *are* fermentable (in general) and they are extracted in all-grain. They are simply ignored in extract steeping. There are, of course, other adjuncts that don't have fermentable sugars. At lest I assume there are, rice hulls, um, other stuff.

I *think* the term "unfermentable" and "adjunct" technically refer to things without fermentable sugars and wouldn't be used for specialty grains which, as you point out, do have sugars. I think in discussions about extract and steeping where these sugars are insignificant people informally use the term "unfermentable".

I think.

Actually, if a five gallon recipe had 1/2 lb of specialty grain and you steeped out the sugars with, say, 50% efficiency, that'd account for almost 2 gravity points, wouldn't it? Not much but measurable... you've given me something to think about.

 

[kombat]

They *do* contain sugar and they *are* fermentable and you might (or might not) extract some of them through steeping.

But the amount you extract through steeping isn't significant and the purpose of steeping isn't for the sugars. Mashing? In mashing you extract the sugars from the specialty grains and you work it into you calculations.

Um... I think.

Now I'm just more confused.

My understanding that the definition of a "mash" meant there was conversion occurring. That is, diastatic enzymes (from base malts) was converting starch to sugars.

The enzymes aren't required for the sugars to dissolve into solution - they just convert the starches to sugars. If the sugars are already there (and, of course, the grain is milled to expose it), it should dissolve into the water regardless of the presence or absence of diastatic enzymes, right? The temperature is the same (both mashing and steeping happen around 150° F), so why would the sugars go into solution in a mash, but not a steep?

 

[woozy]

Okay.

A mash you let the grains sit for an hour at a constant and specific temperature for an hour. Starches convert to sugar.

A steep you let the grains sit in warm water for a shorter period of time. Maybe some conversion occurs maybe it doesn't.

After the mash you lauter and sparge. You rinse, soak and leach and extract as many of those coverted sugars as you can.

A steep you pull the grains out. Okay maybe some sugars are converted and are rinsed out. But not enough to write home about.

 

[bja]

It's astonishing how many people don't know the difference between steeping and mashing.

 

[evrose]

Remember, guys were making this stuff long before hydrometers or thermometers were ever invented.

That doesn't mean the stuff they were making was any good.

Process control has VASTLY improved many products, beer included.

 

[BigRob]

You can steep or mash crystal/caramel/roasted malts forever and they won't convert. The enzymes were denatured during the process of creating the malts themselves. Steeping will extract the already present sugars, not create new ones.

Mashing requires the presence of some type of base malt, you utilize the enzymes present in the malt, in conjunction with the starch in the malt, along with water and the proper temp to optimize the activity of one of two different types of enzymes present. This converts the starch into sugar and results in your sweet wort.

In general sugars produced by mashing are very easily digested by yeast, whereas crystal malts are usually caramelized sugars that yeast will not consume as readily (or at all in some cases)

 

[brewkinger]

Well stated!!

 

[woozy]

You can steep or mash crystal/caramel/roasted malts forever and they won't convert. The enzymes were denatured during the process of creating the malts themselves.

I stand corrected.

The point is still valid that steeping grains is a very different process than mashing and for a different purpose. Temp control and time is not so important a factor with steeping.

But now I'm a little confused. I'm pretty certain crystal/caramel/roasted have sugars, do they not? They leach out during a mash and you calculate them into your wort's specific gravity. I learn today that they do not ferment. I therefore assume that are still their in the beers final gravity. So if these sugars have been converted, how much are extracted (rinsed, leeched, whatever the heck the terminology is) via steeping?

=====ah! found my answer====

http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-4-1.html

You do extract some sugars from steeping for some grains but they are very small compared with those that come out through the mash lauter process and some grains have none.

I'm not sure why crystal will have minimal steepable sugars but vienna malt will have none but they both have plenty that are extractable during the mashing process.

 

[brewkinger]

So if we steep a base malt with enzymes in addition to crystal or Vienna, do the enzymes help convert the starches in the crystal etc...

 

[kombat]

A steep you let the grains sit in warm water for a shorter period of time. Maybe some conversion occurs maybe it doesn't.

A steep you pull the grains out. Okay maybe some sugars are converted and are rinsed out. But not enough to write home about.

You seem to be using the word "conversion" as a synonym for "dissolved." My understanding is that sugar will dissolve into hot water all on its own. Nothing needs to "convert." If there's sugar in grains (like Crystal malts), and they're milled to expose the sugar, then they'll dissolve into the hot water.

A steep you let the grains sit in warm water for a shorter period of time. Maybe some conversion occurs maybe it doesn't.

If conversion is occurring, then it's no longer a "steep." It's a "mash." And if there are no base malts present, then no conversion can happen at all. Conversion can ONLY happen from the enzymes present in base malts, and only base malts contain those enzymes. No base malts = no possible conversion.

But the sugars can still dissolve.

Someone correct me if I'm way off base here!