Steeping Grains

[bmwwd6]

I just bought my first AHS kit and the instructions say to heat the water to 155 degrees, turn the heat off, and then steep the grains for 25 minutes. Past kits I have used have told me to maintain the water temperature around 155 degrees over the 25 minutes as opposed to letting it drop by turning off the heat like AHS says. Is one way better than the other?

 

[RobertRGeorge]

I have found that if I put the grains in cool water, raise the temp to 150-155 or so, steep them for 30 minutes, remove the bag and let it drain into the boiler for 15 minutes or so, I get a very nice result. A slight drop in temperature over the course of 15 minutes should be negligible in effect.

 

[GreenDragon]

You're basically doing a really really small MLT, so you ideally want to keep the temp as close to 153F as possible for the entire time. If you keep the pot on a burner though the water at the bottom of the pot, closest to the burner, could actually be warmer so I can see both sides of the strategy.

 

[ludomonster]

You're basically doing a really really small MLT, so you ideally want to keep the temp as close to 153F as possible for the entire time. If you keep the pot on a burner though the water at the bottom of the pot, closest to the burner, could actually be warmer so I can see both sides of the strategy.

The pH requirements for mashing and steeping are different. Also, the specialty grains are assumed to have little or no diastatic power, so you aren't extracting fermentable sugars (significantly) from the grains.

You should be able to maintain the temperature of the steep simply by keeping the lid on.

 

[amandabab]

steeping and mashing are two completely different things.

Both methods the OP mentioned will work, turning the heat off will still likely hold temp for 20-30 minutes. cold addition and heating the water to temp with the grains in it works equally well.