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
Either way will work fine. Most brewers will mix all the malt together
Fred
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?
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.
[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.
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!
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
The whole book is an essential reference, consider buying the 3rd edition (1st is on-line)
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