left steeping grains in too long?

[kepling5001]

Long story short I made my first beer kit yesterday that was a kit for an stout. The directions (I know I shouldn't have even looked at them) said to put the steeping grains that came with the kit into a Muslim bag and keep it in until right before the boil...so I did that. I finished the boil, cooled it down, pitched the yeast, took a reading with the hydrometer and was pretty much right on (1.055). The beer is now bubbling happily in my swamp cooler at around a steady 65 degrees. I am no expert but the smell does smell a little bitter maybe dry?.. but I'm guessing this is the hops I added right at boil and more I added at 55 mins into the 60 min boil. I read that you aren't supposed to steep those grains over 170...so I guess my question is how bad is my beer going to turn out? Thanks guys for any help

Realized this actually wasn't that short lol oh well :cross:

 

[menerdari]

Time will tell, but being as it is in a stout you may not be able to tell.

 

[kylevester]

Wait, the directions said to put your grains in and heat the water and then take them out right before the boil? Are you sure? If so, never buy from them again.

You probably pulled out a lot of tannins and will have a very roasty and likely bitter stout. The bitterness will be from the grains if you heated them up all the way to 200+ deg.

Could you post the whole recipe?

 

[Cheepbeer]

I left grains in too long too... on purpose.... but you seem to have done the right thing by steeping and removing them before the boil.... I dont get the problem

 

[beergolf]

Time will tell.It being a stout. you may be OK.

But that muslim bag may hurt the beer..........."...

 

[kylevester]

I left grains in too long too... on purpose.... but you seem to have done the right thing by steeping and removing them before the boil.... I dont get the problem

Big difference in steeping, say 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes, at 165ish and leaving the grains in while heating to boil and removing right before hand. The latter is what I took his post as saying.

Steeping longer at appropriate temps will pull more color and flavor out, but tannin extraction is not impacted much. Too high of a temp pulls those bitter compounds out of grains and makes for an unpleasant beer.

 

[kepling5001]

The full recipe is at http://www.homebrewers.com/category/aatdvarks.beermakinginstructions/

It says

1. Fill your brewpot with 2.5 gallons of water. Place the specialty grains inside a muslin bag & tie. Add the bag to the brewpot. Turn on the heat. Remove the bag just before the water boils. Discard the grain bag.
2. Turn off the heat and add all of your liquid and/or dry malt extract to the brewpot while stirring. If adding other sugars, (i.e. honey, brown sugar, malto-dextrin, Belgian candi sugar, rice syrup, corn syrup) add them now. Do not add priming

 

[kylevester]

The full recipe is at http://www.homebrewers.com/category/aatdvarks.beermakinginstructions/

It says

1. Fill your brewpot with 2.5 gallons of water. Place the specialty grains inside a muslin bag & tie. Add the bag to the brewpot. Turn on the heat. Remove the bag just before the water boils. Discard the grain bag.
2. Turn off the heat and add all of your liquid and/or dry malt extract to the brewpot while stirring. If adding other sugars, (i.e. honey, brown sugar, malto-dextrin, Belgian candi sugar, rice syrup, corn syrup) add them now. Do not add priming

Yeah, I've never seen that before. Follow How To Brew by John Palmer or posts here on standard mini-mash techniques.

I hope it turns out good for you. Good luck!

 

[kepling5001]

The steeping grains were probaly in the pot for maybe 20 mins and the water wasn't boiling just yet when I took them out but it was pretty close . How much damage will these tannins do and should I dump and restart or just let it go and see what I get?

 

[Frodo]

I boiled a whole pound of grains in my boil kettle once (couldn't figure out how to get them out, using a "new" idea I had that wasn't thought through), and didn't notice a single negative result in the finished beer. I wouldn't purposely do it again, but I think tannin extraction from high temps with a fairly minor amount of grain is wayyy overrated.

edit: just to be clear, I BOILED THEM FOR 60 MINUTES in the boil - didn't see the tannin extraction boogyman after it.

 

[kepling5001]

Frodo you give me hope haha! I will say the beer does smell dryish but still smells good to my inexperience nose

 

[kepling5001]

What type of beer were you brewing frodo?

 

[Frodo]

it was an irish red ale, 1 lb of crystal 60L. my notes say "very obvious caramel sweetness, but not cloying" - nothing about bitter or astringent, and i remember this was a really nice beer! (early 2010).

 

[kylevester]

Tannin extraction depends on the roast of the grain. For you, Frodo, not much is there, but the OP had dark grains for the color.

Since they weren't in there that long, you may be good. Don't toss it until you taste it. It's a stout, so don't toss it until at least 3 months in the bottle or keg. The flavors on a stout tend to mellow with age, so be patient. Take it all the way through.

I had a double chocolate cherry stout that reeked at bottling and didn't taste good (like vomit, honestly). Three and six months later the flavor wasn't drinkable but it didn't make me want to puke, but the smell was still terrible. A year later, after dumping all but 6 bottles, I opened two of them and it had developed a copper flavor. The rest got dumped. Anyway, the flavor got significantly better over time and my issue was the cherries and I probably oxygenated the hell out of it because I was freaking out about it stalling at 1.030 in the primary. I made many more mistakes, and much worse ones honestly, and with age it improved. Ok, that was rambling and not really germane, but there you go.

 

[Frodo]

Tannin extraction depends on the roast of the grain. For you, Frodo, not much is there, but the OP had dark grains for the color.

oh ok... any empirical evidence, or just boogeyman speak?

 

[kylevester]

See How To Brew, Brewing Better Beer, and many other books on the subject of brewing. Along with food science...

Higher roast means more astringent tannins. So, with grains like chocolate malt and black barley, there is more astringency/bitterness potential from too high of extraction temp.

 

[Frodo]

Oh ok. Yeah OP, your beer is ruined.

 

[masskrug]

Damnit! I just did a batch from Homebrewer's Outpost and followed the same procedure (as stated in their directions). I just re-read Palmers book and he said to steep between 150'-170'.



So much to remember.

On a positive note, my OG sample tasted great.

 

[madchemist83]

Just dry hop it with fresh 2012 amarillo .. 4 oz and u good to go \/\/

 

[kepling5001]

So an update....I woke up this morning and read the comments and decided to at least try my satellite bottle a sip. It actually tastes great! Very sweet but I'm assuming that's BC of the wort sugar that hasn't been converted to alcohol yet. Will the taste vary that greatly from this stage to final product? Are the tannins move evident later? Thank you guys for the helpful info

 

[beerman0001]

"You probably pulled out a lot of tannins "
I am not sure where this misconception started but it just is not true. Grains are boiled all the time when you do a decoction mash with no issues. Tannin extraction mostly happens when you fly sparg and let the ph get too low.

 

[Matt3989]

Thank you guys for the helpful info

Idk what you where reading? But i didn't see that much helpful info... If someone ever tells you your beer is ruined before fermentation/conditioning is complete you should proceed to ignore everything they say after...

You thought that steeping the grains at a temp approaching 212 might have hurt your beer. That's understandable, it probably didn't help it. But the complaint you had was a bitter angel while fermenting, all beers smell biter while fermenting, that's the krausen (wort proportions, dead yeast, hop residue.... The greenish brown gunk you see on the sides of the fermenter), it's bitter by nature and it coming out makes the beer taste better.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter8-2-2.html
An intro to it by palmer.

Secondly, if you did pull an extreme amount of tannins from your grains (unlikely). The solution is to condition longer, age will mellow out the flavor and heal your beer.

Congrats, you've made beer! Keep us posted, and start figuring out your next brew.

 

[DrummerBoySeth]

Long story short I made my first beer kit yesterday that was a kit for an stout. The directions (I know I shouldn't have even looked at them) said to put the steeping grains that came with the kit into a Muslim bag and keep it in until right before the boil.

A Muslim bag? Are these grains from the Middle East? You might want to watch out for bottle bombs!

 

[kepling5001]

Idk what you where reading? But i didn't see that much helpful info... If someone ever tells you your beer is ruined before fermentation/conditioning is complete you should proceed to ignore everything they say after...

You thought that steeping the grains at a temp approaching 212 might have hurt your beer. That's understandable, it probably didn't help it. But the complaint you had was a bitter angel while fermenting, all beers smell biter while fermenting, that's the krausen (wort proportions, dead yeast, hop residue.... The greenish brown gunk you see on the sides of the fermenter), it's bitter by nature and it coming out makes the beer taste better.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter8-2-2.html
An intro to it by palmer.

Secondly, if you did pull an extreme amount of tannins from your grains (unlikely). The solution is to condition longer, age will mellow out the flavor and heal your beer.

Congrats, you've made beer! Keep us posted, and start figuring out your next brew.

Thanks for the hope! Haha...yeah I feel a lot more confident now that I've tasted the beer that the finished beer will probaly be OK. On another note...stop making fun of my middle eastern bags :cross:

 

[RM-MN]

As noted above, steeping at a high temperature doesn't by itself extract tannins. In fact, you can boil the grains without extracting tannins to any great extent. Where you extract the tannins is with too high of a pH and high temps. If your pH remains low, no tannins. If you keep the temperature low you get no tannins either. Most of the time the grains will be low pH and will prevent your steeping water from being too high in pH but if your water was very alkaline, you could have problems. That situation is unlikely.

 

[kepling5001]

This is probably a dumb question but how does the water pH get low? Is it just part of tap water or something else?

 

[ArcLight]

>.This is probably a dumb question but how does the water pH get low? Is it just part of tap water or something else?

The grains will lower Ph, especially darker grains. Acid Malt is sprayed with lactic acid and will also lower Ph.
Water salts can also lower Ph.
If you use distilled water, there is no buffering, and your Ph may drop more than you would like.

oh ok... any empirical evidence, or just boogeyman speak?

Frodo, just because you did something incorrectly, and didn't notice a problem, doesn't mean there were no off flavors such as astringency.
Maybe you don't detect them because of the style, that doesn't mean they aren't there. Or maybe you don't know what the off flavor tastes like.

The most important point is to keep the Ph low, so you don't want to steep in a large volume of water.
From what I have read, Ph is the main determinant in leaching, but temperature can increase the leaching. Without proof, steeping grains should be steeped, at less than 170, then removed, not boiled. There may be no problem if you do, but it's not helping you, and may leach some Tannins. RM-MN made a good comment, which I pasted below.



The danger is you are giving misinformation to others, and claiming Tannin extraction is a myth. If you believe this, conduct some experiments, and post your results. But until you have proof, don't tell others to follow a bad process.

"To save money I don't use Starsan, I urinate on my equipment, and have never had an infection. Infections are just boogeyman speak".
Would you take anecdotal evidence like that?

"Water treatments are BS, I use my tap water which is alkaline and has Chlorine and my beer tastes great". (maybe the person only brews stouts, and the beer isn't as good as they think, or as good as it could be)



As RM-MN said
>>As noted above, steeping at a high temperature doesn't by itself extract tannins. In fact, you can boil the grains without extracting tannins to any great extent. Where you extract the tannins is with too high of a pH and high temps. If your pH remains low, no tannins. If you keep the temperature low you get no tannins either. Most of the time the grains will be low pH and will prevent your steeping water from being too high in pH but if your water was very alkaline, you could have problems.

 

[gcdowd]

My first batch, I boiled my grains for 20 minutes. Beer turned out fine.

 

[kepling5001]

Sounds good i am hoping it turns out fine....luckily mine never boiled was just in the pot for the first 15-20 mins before boil

 

[MuddyCreek]

Never throw out your beer before it's done and has sat for awhile. Beer can make miraculous recoveries. (And it can go horribly south.) You shouldn't give up on it before it has a chance to age a bit.