Steeping at Temperatures Far Too High

[Jewrican]

On my first beer, (i am now on my 5th )i made CP's brown ale and when I did i failed to understand how much temperature makes a difference. Ever dumber, I failed to read in the instructions that it says to steep at 153 degrees.

Anyway, i did not follow this and steeped it at boiling temperatures for the entire time. I was wondering what effect this likely had on that beer.

Overall it was good especially for a first beer. I felt that it lacked mouthfeel and taste .. i guess it is hard to explain... i guess i would just want it to have some more flavor and was just wondering what effect my poor process had and what it could have been. I will have to brew it again just to try it out.

What do you think?

 

[Jewrican]

damn noone huh? ha ha

 

[fratermus]

I am not familiar with CP's Brown Ale (searched for it on HBT and saw no obvious hits) so these will be guesses.


Steeping at 153F sounds like a (mini?) mash. Steeping at boiling would cause:

* whatever base grains that were present to not convert their starches (or other adjuncts' starches) to fermentable sugars. This might present as low OG, cloudiness, general lessening of the final product (depending on the ratio of extract to base grains).

* increased tannin extraction. This might present as astringency.

I say brew it again and see how it turns out.

 

[ifishsum]

If it was really just a steep, the temperature is not as critical as with a mash. The only real negative in a steep with that high of temperature would be possible tannin extraction as fratermus said.

Now, if it really was supposed to be a mini-mash and you boiled it, it could throw off the beer by quite a bit depending on how much grains made up the mash portion of the recipe. Mashing requires a much narrower temperature window for successful conversion, and the 153* as stated in the directions does sound a bit more exact than you'd expect for a simple steep. Having the whole recipe would help, if you still have it.