I am reletively new to the art of brewing. I started brewing extracts in April and graduated to brewing all grain in June. For my second all grain brew, I brewed a cherry stout. A buddy of mine, who is a brewer, suggested that I cold steep my roasted barley and chocolate malts for about 24 hours before brewing to eliminate a harsh bitter taste caused by mashing these grains. I did this and the beer turned out great. My girlfriend has finally developed a taste for a craft beer…Unfortunetely it is Founders Breakfast Stout. Yeah, she has nice…but expensive taste. I love the beer too, so I am going to try to brew a clone. This will be my second all grain stout. My question is…Is there a significant difference in cold steeping the dark grains and what the result would be if I mashed them with the rest of the grains? Or am I just wasting my time with the cold steep?
I think there is a difference between cold steeping and regular mashing. A buddy of mine makes the best porters and stouts around and has several pounds of medals hanging from his neck to prove it, and he totally swears by the cold steeping method. So if you want something smooth and plenty drinkable for your girlfriend, then by all means I think it is worth the extra effort. Unless you secretly hate your girlfriend.
Our brew club is scheduled to evaluate this process for our January group project.
We will be doing a regular mash of all grains together, a mash where we cold steep the dark grains
and one where we add the dark grain to the mash prior to vorlauf.
Our VP is supposed to be formulating the recipe and procedures which will be executed
by 5 or 6 members, then brought to a meeting for evaluation once conditioning is complete.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Thanks, Dave! And Diane, keep us posted on how that turns out! It’s not like the process of cold steeping is too difficult or time consuming. I just like to be effecient with my work, any work. So, if it’s pointless, I’d stop doing it. But if it is truly worth while, I will gladly continue to do it. One think that I like better than being effecient, is good beer!
If you cold steep the dark grains, do you use that water in the mash? Or do you add it to the boil?
I’ve not been happy with the harsher roasted notes in my last two batches of porter and perhaps this could help eliminate them. I’ve also thought of using debittered black malt, but I typically love me some roasted barley.
The main benefit of a cold steep is that you are not extracting the harsh astringency often associated with roasted grains mashed at a high temperature.
Gordon mitigates this a couple of ways. He does the cold steep (which I really like).
Another thing to try is to acidify your mash to below a pH of 6.0. The harshness comes out when the grains are exposed to a pH greater than 6.0 and a water temperature of over 170 degrees. This is the combination to avoid. He also is a big advocate of adding the roasted or even crystal malts to the vorlauf, minimizing the contact time with the mash and simply allowing for the sugars to be rinsed off. Remember for crystal and roasted malts, the conversion is already done. You are simply rinsing the sugars off.
If you have a pH of less than 6.0, you can sparge with water at 170 for as long as you want without risk of astringency.
Hope that helps with ways to handle those dark grains. Try them both.
with crystal malts the conversion is done. with roasted it is not, but you don’t care because the amount of sugar they offer is minimal, they are really only there for color and flavour.
I haven’t tried the cold steep thing yet. I am hesitant because i LIKE the roasty flavour and I would hate to lose that in a stout or porter. I try to keep my pH in line so I don’t get harsh astringency but I still want roasty flavour.
Does any roast come through with the cold steep? how about the late mash addition?
well my next dark beer is a tested recipe and I don’t want to mess with it (NHC bound) but I will have to try this in the near future. sort of means a double (or triple) brew day or two (or three) brew days close enough to each other to fairly evaluate the differences of the dark malt addition timing/method.
When I did it with my Cherry Stout, I calculated the amout of water used to cold steep these grains from my total water used for the mash. I then added all of the cold steeped water to the boil with about 20 minutes to go (as told by a buddy). These seemed to work well, but I am still on the fence to see if this process is necessary…Good information coming!
I did the cold steep and even a cold steep with the cold steeped “wort” added at knockout. It still has flavor, but it is muted, for sure. But it works really well for a Schwarzbier or dark lager IMO.
