Steeping Flaked Rye

[whitnes10]

Will I get anything out of (flavor wise) from steeping Flaked Rye? I want to make a Rye IPA.

I do extract brewing, have moved to DME rather than LME as I like the finished product more. I generally do a 30-45min steep. I haven't quite gotten into partial mash yet.

Anyway just wondering what my options are for a RYE IPA. THanks!

[KB1138]

There is a Rye extract on the market, I don't think it's available anywhere but online. As for steeping the rye flakes I'm not sure. It's been awhile since I've done an extract batch and I never used rye flakes when I did. Try it and find out I guess

[darciandjenn]

I'm pretty sure Rye should be mashed. Doing a partial mash isn't much more work than doing a 45 minute steep, IMHO. A worthy step to improving your beer...

[amartin]

I wouldn't steep rye, or any other base malt or flaked grain. It has starch in it that won't be converted and will end up in the finished beer, which can cause a haze or maybe even an infection.

[whitnes10]

I'm pretty sure Rye should be mashed. Doing a partial mash isn't much more work than doing a 45 minute steep, IMHO. A worthy step to improving your beer...

I really need to figure out how to go to Partial Mash. Need to do some reading and see how it's done. I know it adds time onto the brewing time, but with Partial Mash I feel like I'll have more options. Love my beers right now, but always looking to improve.

Any specific form help with this? The steps, how to put my recipes into BeerSmith (I assume there would be extra that I need to input into the recipes).

[KB1138]

Beer Smith has an option for partial mash. I'd recommend getting a mesh bag of some sort, I now Noble Grape has a variety for straining fruits. Just heat your water up to temp and add the grain in a bag. Let it sit and your mash is done. Keeping the temps may be difficult. Wrapping the kettle with blankets should help insulate it. If your kettle is small enough you could pre-heat your oven to slightly higher than your mash temp and keep it in there for the duration. I used to do that when I first started doing all grain. There's some evidence out there that a full 60 min mash isn't strictly necessary and that conversion can take place within a half hour or so, so partial mashing doesn't need to take more time than steeping grains.

[whitnes10]

So equipment that i would need is i believe, just another brewing pot so I have 2? 1 for the partial mash and one for the sparge water? Also, what is the way to separate the grains from mash water at the end of the mash or is that why you mentioned the mesh bag to put the grains during the mash?

[whitnes10]

Mesh Bag - would that be considered BIAB? I'm getting all confused now haha

[darciandjenn]

All we used as this mesh bag, and two pots.. so almost no equipment necessary.
http://www.everwoodavebrewshop.com/prod ... ag-grn.htm

Here's the partial mash method we employed before we went All-Grain:

1. Heat strike water in brew kettle ("BK" aka a big canning pot)
2. Add big mesh bag to BK, pour grains into the bag, stirring to eliminate clumps
3. Stick pot in the oven on "keep warm" mode
4. Set timer for 60 mins
5. Start heating sparge water in stock pot
6. Take BK out of the oven, lift bag o' grains out BK and set a colander underneath them so that sweet wort can continue to drain into the BK from the bag.
7. Ladle sparge water over the grains
8. Chuck the grains and start your boil

Lots of people don't sparge. It's just how we did it - there are probably a million ways to adapt it to your system. And yes, beersmith is a godsend for calculating all of the temps and volumes you need...

[darciandjenn]

I suppose it's a kind of a BIAB Partial Mash, yes.

[whitnes10]

Okay that seems pretty simplistic, really not that challenging. I think my main thing now is is figuring out how to do the recipes on BeerSmith, where i'm used to inserting them all as extract. I know to put it in as a "partial mash", but then I don't know what profiles (pot, mash profile) to choose. Have to try and figure that all out before switching the type of brewing I do.

[jason.loxton]

Literally the only difference between steeping and a partial mash in terms of process is that you're paying a closer attention to the temp of the water that you're steeping in. If you 'steep' in water held consistent at say 152 f... Well, congrats, you've done a partial mash! Exact same equipment, just a little closer supervision of the dial on your stove. (You also want to do a partial mash in only part of the water required for your whole batch, as the enzymes are more effective at reasonable dilutions, but adding this is a no brainer: just 'steep' at around 1.5 quarts/pound and you're golden.)

[whitnes10]

I probably have not kept the water at a consistent steeping temp, but I don't see that being a problem for me to do. I just really need to see how it will change all my numbers in beersmith, as it would change my end result in terms of ABV, IBU, etc, would it not? I know just simply changing the tab from Extract to Partial Mash on one of my current recipes, changes the numbers and that's without changing the pot profile. Which pot profile should I use is my main question? Right now I use 3 Gal/11.4 L Extract (5.00 gal).

Thoughts?

[whitnes10]

Or do I just keep that the same? It almost seems like I would keep that same same.

[whitnes10]

From what my research last night and what you guys have all helped me with so far, by simply going to a partial mash, I will extract more sugars from the grain, resulting in options for different flavours than steeping, higher ABV which will bring down the IBU's.

Would I be correct?

[LiverDance]

From what my research last night and what you guys have all helped me with so far, by simply going to a partial mash, I will extract more sugars from the grain, resulting in options for different flavours than steeping, higher ABV which will bring down the IBU's.

Would I be correct?

It won't bring down your IBU's but I can see why you would say that. It'll lower your BU:GU (bitterness units to gravity units) ratio which will result in a less bitter/hoppy perception of the beer. If you don't use beersmith for recipe calculations I highly recommend it, best money I've spent on my brewing.

[jason.loxton]

Well, assuming his gravity goes up it would slightly reduce his IBUs due to lower utilization. That's likely what he's seeing on Beersmith, I'd guess. (I imagine he's set the recipe up with a grain that requires mashing and then he's flipping back and forth between a mode that counts those grains as a sugar addition and one that doesn't, and that's impacting utilization.)

[darciandjenn]

You'll want to reduce the amount of DME you use so that your recipe will have the same ABV, etc. I believe there is a convert recipe tool or a substitute tool ingredient in Beersmith that might be helpful for you.

We always aimed to get about half the fermentables from the mini-mash and then add the rest in the form of DME at the 10 minute mark of the boil. This seemed to help with both hop utilization and to avoid unwanted darkening of the extract since our boil wasn't overly concentrated until that 10 minute mark.

[whitnes10]

Thanks guys, I think I've figured out the whole thing on Beersmith, so I'm giving partial mash a go on Friday night, making a Cream Ale for some friends. Have everything I need, so we'll see what happens. I'm pretty confident it'll be good.

@darciandjenn - I'm going to use your process and give that a go. The only thing this won't have, is getting about half the fermentables from the partial mash. My partial mash will be about 35% of the fermentables, with the rest from DME and some corn sugar to bring up the ABV slightly.

@darciandjenn - does adding the DME later in the boil, change anything other than the darkening, ie. bitterness, ABV, sludge, etc? I have never experimented with late malt additions, always have just added at the beginning of the boil.

Thanks again for all the input and happy brewing!

[darciandjenn]

I think it will slightly affect your hop utilization (so your bitterness), but it should not have an effect on the ABV. You'll end up with two hot breaks. Even when we were doing full extract and steep grain recipes, we found that adding about half the extract late in the boil made for better tasting brews.

Good luck!

[whitnes10]

Sweet, I may change that in my recipe for tomorrow and see how it affects numbers and just make the adjustments necessary! Forgot my phone at home today, so will have to wait until after work to play around with it.

Thanks again!

[whitnes10]

Another question that I just thought of. How much water should I use for my Mash? I'm going to be mashing 0.59kg of Crystal 30L and 0.45kg of Crystal 15L. My batch size is 5.5gal and on beersmith I used the 3gal pot. This usualy results in about 11L of water for my boil, which is what I have normally steeped my grains in.

[darciandjenn]

You'll want to use less water in your mash. Beersmith should help with this calculation, but there's a rule of thumb of about 2.6 L of water to kg of grain. Your recipe would work out to around 2.7 L for your mash. You would increase your boil volume to around 11 L with the sparge water that would follow.

That said, I'm a bit confused that you don't' have any base malt in your mash and the amount of grain you are using seems low.

We basically cribbed our method from the partial mash instructions that come with the kits from love2brew.com (though we've never ordered a kit from them - I found them through the brulosophy blog). Might be worth giving it a read:
http://love2brew.dreamhosters.com/vspfi ... yblonde(pm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).pdf

It won't help with recipe formulation but having a step by step process really helped us figure it all out.

And, I haven't mentioned this until now, but Dave at Everwood was also pretty fantastic with helping us figure our recipes out.

[whitnes10]

Are you supposed to always have a base malt (2-row, munich, etc) in a partial mash recipe? Also, with only 2.7L of water, how would you recommend keeping the grains submerged in the water, yet off the bottom of the pot?

I don't have all the exact numbers of my recipe here with me today, but it's basically:

Cream Ale
0.65kg Crystal 30L
0.45kg Crystal 15L
2kg Light DME
0.35kg Corn Sugar
Hops: Fuggles (bittering early boil 45 and 30min mark), EKG (middle and end of boil for slight flavour 15 and 5min mark)

I think my ABV worked out to be 5.89% and IBU was around 16. And that was after using the Beersmith app and putting it under a partial mash with a 45min boil and 3gal pot.

Let me know if you think this will be fine, if not I can make some adjustments to make it more of a partial mash, or just turn it back to an extract brew. My main idea with this is just to get some of the caramel flavours from the grains for the cream ale. I'm hoping for it to turn out similar to that of the Nine Locks Cream ale, with I was able to get the numbers for and the hops. Then I found out the flavour profile, which is why I opted for the 2 types of grains.

[darciandjenn]

Anyone is free to correct me, but if your only grains are crystal malts, I see no need to mash because there won't be any conversion happening. The purpose of mashing is to convert the starches of your grains (typically your base malts and adjuncts) into fermentable sugars through various enzymatic reactions. With crystal malts, the starches have already been converted to sugars through the production process (they are stewed and then kilned), so steeping them and mashing them will basically do the same thing - you're basically just rinsing the sugars from the grains either way.