In Brewing Classic Styles Palmer says you can steep specialty grains overnight in cold water, especially if you have a lot of dark grains. Has anyone done this? If you steep them overnight can you skip heating up to 155 degrees and holding for 30 minutes on brew day?
I have been doing this for many years. Add it all to the sparge on brew say. Or add the liquid to the boil.
There is a discussion in Brewing Better Beer about this technique.
+1. Same thing I do. Works well.
No need to heat the steeped grains that soaked overnight before putting in boil?
No need. Heating may give some flavors, but don’t overdo it. You are avoiding extraction of harsh flavors by cold steeping.
I’ve done this when I’m using a dark roasted grain for color adjustment and want to minimize the flavor contribution. I do find it provides less harshness when using roasted grains.
But the easiest way to approach steeping grains is just to add them to your kettle when you start heating your water, then pull them when it hits about 165F. This works perfectly fine - there’s no need to hold it at a specific temp unless you are doing a partial mash.
Here’s some info from George Fix…http://hbd.org/clubs/cascade/public_html/brewing/index.html
Don’t forget the article “Cold Water Extraction of Dark Grains” by Mary Ann Gruber in the Jan Feb 2002 Zymurgy.
I find that I get less color from cold steeping even when I add the malt to the sparge water. I haven’t done enough to cold steeping to figure out how much extra grain I should use to compensate. I may have cold steeped with whole malts rather than ground malt so my experience may simply reflect the grind.
What do other people think?
Yep, that too. The Fix info I linked quotes her from before that was published.
The info I linked says to use at least 2x as much grain. And you definitely need to crush the grain.
Interesting. Is it worth buying the extra grain?
That is up to you to decide. Cold steeping provides a smoother flavor. You can get a smoother flavor by using huskless dark grains like carafa and midnight wheat. However there is no huskless replacement for roasted barley that I’m aware of.
Anyway I’ll continue to do cold extracts for 2nd running beers
I have had great results adding my dark specialty grains at vorlauf/sparge…it’s a lot easier than cold steeping.
I did the cold steeping until I discovered Sinamar. Once I found that someone had done the work for me, I quit using cold steeping.
What volume do you buy that in? I did see what looked like maybe 4 liter containers at Russian River.
I just buy the 4 oz. bottle, but I’ve seen the 4L jugs at Rogue, too.
Patagonia Malt has a huskless roast barley they call Perla Negra (black pearl barley). I haven’t ever seen it at the local homebrew shop, but if you ask around you might be able to get your hands on a few pounds. Check it out.