Sweet Potatoe Ale

[Chinese]

I am making an Ale(extract) kit and was planning on adding grilled sweet potatoes and spices to the wort at various times. A fellow at a brew shop talked me into buying a few lbs of 3 row to "cook up" with the sweet potatoes at around 150 degrees. I'm ready to do it, but I just don't REALLY know what to do. Is this "cooking" actually being done in the wort? Forgive my ignorance, but I just don't want to screw it up. Please advise.

 

[Revvy]

You want to roast the sweetpotatoes ahead of time till they are soft, this will bring out the natural sugars for the yeast to be able to eat and flavor the beer.

Here's a good thread on it.

I made this sweet potato mead, the information is really good in there as well.

 

[Chinese]

This fella talked me into buying the grain to cook with the sweet potatoes to convert the starches to sugar or something like that. Won't the extract in the wort(kit) take care of that?

 

[Revvy]

This fella talked me into buying the grain to cook with the sweet potatoes to convert the starches to sugar or something like that. Won't the extract in the wort(kit) take care of that?

No, what he's talking about is a cereal mash. It's used with corn and rice to convert it.Most extract has no diastatic power. But I've never heard of doing it with a starchy fruit like that. All I've ever heard, read, or done simply involved roasting them before adding them.