I'm still a noobie with about 6 batches under my belt. I'm well satisfied with extract brewing for the foreseeable future.

I've read most of Papazian's "Complete Joy of Homebrewing" but I must have missed something. How does the brewer know which grains are good for steeping with extract straight from the supplier, and which should be mashed before using? Is there an overlap?

Thanks,

Jim

Tags: mashing grains, steeping grains

Great question Jim. I want to add a little to it if I could. I have been brewing for a couple of years and still don't really know what the differance is between steeping and mashing. Isn't it all just cooking the grains? Or am I way the heck off?

In extract brewing, you steep grains to extract as much flavor as you can out of them. It's a pretty simple and straight-forward process. Mashing is a bit more complex.

Mashing is the process of converting the starches in grain into sugar. Malted barley contains amylase enzymes. When the barley is steeped at the correct temperatures, the proper conditions are met for these enzymes to convert starches to sugars. Without this reaction, you wouldn't have any fermentable sugars for your yeast to ferment, and thus no beer. The malt extract that you guys are using has already been mashed.

The more highly kilned a malt is, the less enzymes it will have available for mashing. This is commonly referred to as 'diastatic power'. Almost all of your specialty roasted, toasted, crystal and black malts have no diastatic power. These malts are mashed with lighter colored grains (pale, pilsner, etc) so that the enzymes from the lighter grains will convert the starches from the darker grains.

As long as you can keep the temperature very consistent, you can conduct a mash by steeping your grains on a stove. Many homebrewers use an Igloo cooler for their mash tun, because the cooler will keep the temperature of the mash more consistent over the 60-90 minutes needed for conversion to take place.

As I've never done an extract beer before, I'll leave it up to someone more knowledgeable to answer the original question.

Cheers
Dave

Dave covered the second question so I will try to answer the first one.

I have a nice table of various malts at the following webpage: http://www.mosquitobytes.com/Den/Beer/Hmbrewing/Recipes.html/#Table1.

Basically those malts listed as being Specialty Malts - Caramelized and Specialty Malts - Roasted may be steeped and need not be mashed.

I hope this helps.

- Scott

Great information! What I love about this hobby is that it can be as easy or complex as the home brewer cares to make it.

Good brewing

An idea I found for heating water using an electric stove, and I have not tried this yet, is to place the kettle containing water for the mash inside the oven. The reasoning is that there is not much control over heat on top of an electric stove and the oven has a more reliable means to control heat. Check the water in the oven so it does not boil over and when the temperature of the water reaches the temperature you want to use for steeping or mash, pour it in. Sounds good. Anyone actually try this?