Crystal malt- mashing & steeping?

[pluckthechicken]

So I've been chucking my crystal malt into the mash, as most (all?) the recipes I've seen have done. But I've been thinking about it, and does mashing crystal/caramel affect the sweetness that you get from it?

So crystal has been kilned damp to convert the starches into sugars, which then caramelize and form large complex sugars that our yeasties can't metabolise. Thus, they escape fermentation and lend themselves to a sweet taste in the final beer. But if we stick them in the mash, can't these complex sugars get broken down by amylase and end up as fermentables? Would they contribute a sweeter flavour if they were steeped separately and added after mashout? Or simply added to the mash in the last 10 minutes? Or are the sugars in crystal not accessible to amylase enzymes?



Thanks for the help, I feel like I've missed something.

 

[brewpirate]

Being kilned there are no enzymes in crystal malt so you need base grain to convert it. I always add to my mash but if you were to properly mash out and denature all the enzymes then you could steep and not have any conversion and all sugar. Alpha wont be an issue, beta chop large chains into small chained sugar so keep it above 68c.

 

[pluckthechicken]

Okay cool, well my brews are almost always over 80% base malt so conversion is surely taking place. Do you know if anyone takes advantage of adding crystal in steps (ie. late in the mash) to tailor the sweetness? Or is mash temperature just a better way of doing it?

One reason I thought of this is that extract brewers don't have any enzymes present when they steep their specialty malts... so does that mean they get a sweeter beer than when AG brewers mash them?

 

[clibit]

I've done both but generally only about 5% and haven't noticed a difference. You get better extraction of fermentable sugars if you mash but I'm not sure that affects sweetness, significantly anyway. Not an expert on this though.