Grains - when to grind

[kevinm]

Im a bit of a brewing newbie and want to include about 1.5 Kg medium roasted grains to a 40 Pint Yorkshire Bitter kit to try and enhance the flavour (hops too, but im OK with that bit).
My question is this;
if I steep the grains in 15 litres of water at 68 deg C before removing them and then boiling the wort, is there any point that I need to crush them to help release all of the natural starches, or will this just soak out into the wort from the full grain kernel?
Do I have to grind them before the "mash?" stage..... I may be a bit confused on terminology here

obviously those grain grinders have their use in brewing, but when?
If there is a thread in existence explaining this in detail. a simple link would do.
many thanks and cheers,
Kevin

 

[ManseMasher]

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter17-1.html

Good little article. You won't get much, if anything, out of uncrushed grain, and yes, it must be done before the mash. Whereabouts are you by the way?!

 

[clibit]

What do you mean exactly by medium roasted grains?

 

[kevinm]

ManseMasher,
Thanks, thats an excellent article, tells me everything i need to know. By the way, I am from Yorkshire but in Indonesia for 12 yrs now.

cheers,
kevin

 

[kevinm]

hiya clibit,
Sorry, i mean medium toasted malt grains. i think its called "victory"

cheers,
kevin

 

[clibit]

Victory malt isn't added in large quantities, it's used to boost maltiness in a beer, and it is advised to restrict it to 5 - 15% of the grain in an all grain beer. So you are looking at around 200g to 750g in a 5 gallon brew.

Get some pale malt and mash it together with about 400g/14oz of the Victory.

 

[Twostage]

Victory malt isn't added in large quantities, it's used to boost maltiness in a beer, and it is advised to restrict it to 5 - 15% of the grain in an all grain beer. So you are looking at around 200g to 750g in a 5 gallon brew.

Get some pale malt and mash it together with about 400g/14oz of the Victory.

Question: Do you always need some base malt to ensure the enzymatic reactions happen or does it depend on which specialty malts you are using?

 

[clibit]

Certain grains need to have base malt mashed with them, some don't. Crystal, chocolate, roast barley and black don't - they can be steeped separately. And some others, like Cara- malts (which are German/Belgian crystal malts), This chart tells you which malts need mashing and which don't.

http://beersmith.com/grain-list/

 

[Twostage]

Certain grains need to have base malt mashed with them, some don't. Crystal, chocolate, roast barley and black don't - they can be steeped separately. And some others, like Cara- malts (which are German/Belgian crystal malts), This chart tells you which malts need mashing and which don't.

http://beersmith.com/grain-list/

Good link :-)

 

[kevinm]

Certain grains need to have base malt mashed with them, some don't. Crystal, chocolate, roast barley and black don't - they can be steeped separately. And some others, like Cara- malts (which are German/Belgian crystal malts), This chart tells you which malts need mashing and which don't.

http://beersmith.com/grain-list/

tip top
good reference link,
thanks