mini mash and specialty grains

Brewing Processes
1

Im an extract brewer and want to make the small step up to mini mashing. My question is, if im going to mash ~3lbs of malt, do i wait to add the specialty grains and step them like i normally would if I were doing an extract batch, or can I add them with the base malt and go from there? thanks

2

Either way will work fine.  Most brewers will mix all the malt together

Fred

3

cool, that would save a lot of time. when you are mini mashing, what % of your gravity do you want to get from your malt, as much as possible?

4

throw the specialty malts right in the mini mash.    The only time you might want to steep the specialty malts separately is if you’re using a lot of roasted malts, i.e. in a stout.    The roasted malts can drop the pH too low on such a small mash.

5

[quote]what % of your gravity do you want to get from your malt, as much as possible?
[/quote]

Yes, I would mash as much as your setup will allow.  Do you use any software to calculate OG?  I would go with 50-60% efficiency for a mini mash.

6

When I used to do partial mashes, I would try to get as much of my gravity as my partial-mash system would allow from the grains.  I have a link to the method I used to use for partial mashing in my sig.  Click on it to see a photo-representation of my process.  BTW, with my partial-mash process, I usually only had to use about 1# DME to hit my target O.G.

Cheers!

7

John Palmer’s “How to Brew” has a great section on partial mashes and the inevitable move to all-grain.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/index.html

I also recommend a brewing software to help calculate OG and efficiency.  More importantly they offer boil-off, dilution, and added extract calculators to help you hit your target gravity if and/or when you miss it.

Cheers

8

The whole book is an essential reference, consider buying the 3rd edition (1st is on-line)

9

Thanks for all the info, I do have beersmith, so i can use that and change the efficiency %. the tip about the roasted malts and the pH is good to know as the first beer I will probably make if I minimash will be a stout. Thanks again