Author: Jake Huolihan

One of the more common approaches to brewing among beginners involves blending malt extract with water to create a base wort then steeping specialty malts to add character. Depending on the malts steeped, one can produce any number of styles from the same base wort. While I’ve long since left the world of extract brewing, this same basic technique is being used by some all-grain brewers to easily produce various styles.

The process is simple and involves first splitting the wort from a single large mash between two or more kettles. From there, each wort can be hit with various combinations of specialty malts, boiled with unique hop varieties, and fermented with different yeast strains to create drastically different beer styles. Starting with a basic pale wort, a brewer can produce anything from a hoppy American Pale Ale to a rich and malty American Porter, all from a single mash.

As is often the case, there are some who question this technique, namely those who feel the inclusion of specialty malts in the full mash imparts a quality unattainable by steeping alone. However reasonable it may seem that steeping specialty malts could accomplish a similar result as mashing given they’re largely non-diastatic and used primarily to impart color and flavor, I was curious to see for myself and decided to put it to the test!

| PURPOSE |

To evaluate the differences between a Stout where all the specialty grains were included in the mash and one where the specialty grains were steeped in the wort prior to boiling.

| METHODS |

I went with a Foreign Extra Stout for this xBmt and designed a recipe inspired a few others I found online.

Ascension

Recipe Details Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV 5.5 gal 60 min 66.8 IBUs 48.5 SRM 1.069 1.017 6.9 % Actuals 1.069 1.017 6.9 % Fermentables Name Amount % Exclusivo Pale Malt (Cargill) 15 lbs 89.55 Roasted Barley 1.75 lbs 10.45 Hops Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha % Hallertau Magnum 50 g 60 min Boil Pellet 11.5 Yeast Name Lab Attenuation Temperature Darkness (A10) Imperial Yeast 73% 62°F - 72°F Notes Water Profile: Ca 58 | Mg 0 | Na 8 | SO4 60 | Cl 61 Download Download this recipe's BeerXML file

The night before brewing, I collected the water and adjusted it to my desired profile before weighing out and milling the grains, making sure to keep the roasted grains separate for one of the batches.

I awoke the next morning and began heating the first volumes of water, separating the start of each batch by 20 minutes. Once strike temperature was reached, I mashed in and checked to ensure both reached the same target mash temperature.

An obvious and unsurprising difference in color was observed during the mash rest.

I took pH measurements 30 minutes into each mash, the one including roasted grains being predictably lower.

During the saccharification rests, I weighed out the kettle hop additions.

Following each 60 minute mash rest, the sweet wort was transferred to separate kettles.

While I immediately began heating the full mash wort to a boil, I set my temperature controller to hold the other batch of wort at 150°F/66°C then added the bagged roasted grains.

After a 20 minute steep, the grains were removed and I began heating the wort like normal. The worts were boiled for 60 minutes with hops added per the recipe.

Once each boil was finished, I quickly chilled the wort to a few degrees warmer than my groundwater temperature.

Refractometer readings at this point showed the worts had achieved the same OG.

I proceeded to rack identical volumes of wort from each kettle to separate sanitized Brew Buckets.

The filled fermentors were connected to my glycol system, which dropped the temperature of each wort from 80°F/27°C to 62°F/17°C in just 10 minutes. I pitched a single pack of Imperial Yeast A10 Darkness into each batch then hit both with a 60 second dose of oxygen.

Both beers were showing signs of activity the following morning and I left them alone to continue fermenting. With diminished activity 5 days post-pitch, I raised the temperature of the beers to 68°F/20°C to ensure complete attenuation. Hydrometer measurements taken a couple days later revealed the FG of the beers was ever so slightly different.

The warm beers were transferred to kegs that were then placed in my keezer. After a couple weeks cold conditioning on gas, the beers were carbonated and ready to serve.

| RESULTS |

A total of 20 people of varying levels of experience participated in this xBmt. Each participant was served 1 sample of the beer made with the roasted grains included in the mash and 2 samples of the beer made with steeped roasted grains then asked to identify the one that was unique. While 11 tasters (p<0.05) would have had to correctly identify the unique sample in order to reach statistical significance, only 7 (p=0.50) made the correct selection, indicating participants in this xBmt were unable to reliably distinguish a Stout made with roasted grains included in the mash from one where the roasted grains were steeped in the wort prior to boiling.

My Impressions: While my initial tastes of these beers made me fairly convinced I would be able to tell them apart, that just wasn’t the case. Out of 5 semi-blind triangle test attempts, I guessed the odd-beer-out just 2 times.

| DISCUSSION |

Steeping specialty grains in wort to add color and character is a common practice among extract brewers, though a seemingly rare method used by those who brew all-grain. On the surface, steeping grains is unnecessary when brewing all-grain, as it’s easy enough to simply include it all in the mash. However, for the brewer looking to easily produce more than one style of beer from one batch of wort, this is a handy approach, and the fact tasters couldn’t reliably tell apart a beer made in such a manner from one where the roasted grains were included in the mash suggests it’s viable as well.

Considering the non-enzymatic nature of the specialty grains used in these xBmt beers, it’s not terribly surprising tasters were unable to distinguish them. In both cases, which involved equal amounts of roasted grains being held at a similar temperature, the primary goal was extracting color and flavor rather than converting starch to sugar. These results seem to indicate this can occur equally as well in the mash as it can in hot wort.

I never doubted that steeping specialty grains worked well, but I was curious to see if it might have a noticeable impact on beer character as compared to mashing with grains. The fact it doesn’t appear to makes me all the more interested in playing around with this very simple method using various combinations of specialty grains. While having a kettle to boil each “batch” makes things easier, the Short & Shoddy BIAB brewer who’s comfortable letting wort sit around for a bit could probably get away with storing the remnant wort in an insulated cooler while the first batch boils. For the brewer looking for a little more variety in their beer life, this may be just the ticket!

If you have any thoughts about this xBmt, please do not hesitate to share in the comments section below!

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