Partial Mash steep time

[FifteenTen]

Doing my first partial mash today. LHBS instructions say steep for 15-30 mins. I thought you steeped for 1 hour, remove grains and boil for one hour adding hops per schedule? What do you guys/gals do?

 

[Irisndfan2]

I steep for 60 minutes trying to maintain the mash temp as much as possible. Let it drip for 5-10 minutes, and then steep it in a seperate kettle for sparging for another 10 minutes. I then pour the mash into the sparge kettle and comense the boil down.

 

[Calder]

If you are steeping (Crystal, Black, Chocolate Malts) you are really just warming up the sugars and rinsing them off the grains. 15 minutes at 160 F and you should have most of them out.

If you are mashing (2-Row, Pale, Munich Malts, etc) then you will need to be at temperature (about 150-155 F) for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer. Note: When mashing, the amount of water you use is also important. If you use too much water, the enzymes are not as concentrated, and it will take longer to convert, and might not completely convert. I use 1.3 quarts of water per lb of grain when doing a partial mash.

 

[FifteenTen]

it is a porter, so shorter time at 160°

 

[Metzger22]

I guess the question would be, what kind of grains are you "steeping"? Is it a true mini mash or is it an extract recipe with specialty grains?

 

[FifteenTen]

It was extract with specialty. I split the diffrence in time between what the LHBS' instructions and what I've seen here. Nonetheless, it's done now and I had a good time doing it. Thank you for all your input.

 

[Yooper]

It was extract with specialty. I split the diffrence in time between what the LHBS' instructions and what I've seen here. Nonetheless, it's done now and I had a good time doing it. Thank you for all your input.

If it's specialty grains (and not a true partial mash with base grains), then steeping at 15-20 minutes is fine. You won't get more out of the grains if you steep longer, but it won't hurt anything either.