Cold steeping roast and crystal malts

[barry44]

Hi all,

I'm looking at doing a stout as one of my forthcoming brews and I've been playing about with bru n water to create a suitable water profile.

Whilst doing this I've noticed that my pH is dropping away and the spreadsheet has given me the option of removing the crystal and roast malts from the mash which does put my pH into the best range.

However, I've haven't done this before and I've a couple of questions that I hope someone can assist with.

I understand that the grains can be steeped for 24 hours in room temp water which is what I would propose to do. After the 24 hours the water is heated to almost boiling and put into the kettle towards the end of the boil. Is this correct?

If this is the correct method, can someone advise the following:

1 - what is the grain/water ratio?
2 - where will this water come from? Do I reduce the mash water by this amount or is it the sparge water? Or is it the overall volume?
3 - do I add salts as per the mash or sparge water to the steeping water?

If I am adding the water to the boiler with, say 15 minutes of the boil to go, I would need to be boiling a lesser volume to accommodate the steeped volume.

For example, if I was to steep the grains in 2.5 litres of water and add that to the boil towards the end, I would need to ensure that the mash and sparge volumes reflected this lesser boil volume. How would I alter the recipe to accommodate? Would I just add the additional as a kettle top up?

Apologies for rambling at the moment, I'm on the train and will revise my post at home once I've had a play with beersmith.

However, I'd appreciate any advice at all.
Cheers Barry

[Mr. Dripping]

I made a stout last weekend Barry and had a similar issue.
I usually make only pale beers and have phosphoric and sulphuric acid to remove alkalinity from my water.
I was getting too low a mash pH and didn't have anything suitable to adjust.
What I did in the end was treat it as a pale grist by taking the black patent and roast barley out and I soaking these overnight at room temperature in 2.5 litres of water.....strained through a sieve this yielded 2 litres of black wort, that I then added to the kettle.
I missed my OG by 2 points, no biggie.....but in hindsight I should have sparged the dark grains.

To adjust the volume of wort I got from the main mash, I just sparged 2 litres less.

[barry44]

What do you mean by sparging the dark grains? Do you mean through them into the mash pre vorlauf, mix them up and sparge them?

[Mr. Dripping]

No, what I meant was that after draining the dark wort; I should have added another 2 litres of water to the dark grains to get the residual sugar.
This only came to me as an after thought when I discovered I was a couple of points short on gravity.

I did think of adding them to the tun prior to vorlaufing and sparging, but I was worried this might bring out a bit of astringency.

[barry44]

Thanks mate.

[Rick_UK]

I often make a double batch of pale ale wort (45l) half of which I keep as a pale ale, the other half becomes a stout or porter by adding a few litres of seperate wort from steeped dark grains and crystal on the stove top. I just steep the grains in a muslin bag in a large pan of untreated water at 70'C for 40 mins rinse the grains with a couple of litres of hot water, boil on the stove for 20 mins and add to the main boiler once I have run off the first half of the wort for the pale ale. I use hop tea to adjust the hopping as required.

Never had any issue with efficiency.

Rick