Steeping Grains for Extract Brew

[Jonathan]

Hi all

Just knocked up my first extract brew at the weekend. It involved steeping some grains for around an hour, and I found our slow-cooker was perfect for this (it was a very small batch!). On the 'keep warm' setting it kept the temperature right around 65 degC, no fiddling required.

With this steeping technique the efficiency in terms of what is extracted from the grains is very low. Would there be any disadvantage to leaving them to steep for longer? Would it extract more yummyness from them? If there is no harm to be done, having discovered the slow cooker trick, I could happily leave them steeping all day if it would help make a better brew!

 

[cheshirehomebrew]

I do my grains for 90 minutes and aslo sparge to make sure i get as much out as possible. Have started using amalase enzyme as well to further convert the starches to sugar, comes in a sachet, I think it was 60p from my local home brew shop and added to the cooled wort before pitching yeast

 

[brewpirate]

Steeping grains are typically used for flavoring/color not necessarily to increase the gravity. Adding amylase or additional base grain high in enzymes will convert and increase the gravity assuming you're not steeping a roasted or high crystal/caramel malt.

 

[Jonathan]

Cheers for the replies, I guess I hadn't thought about whether it was fermentables or colour/flavour that the grains were meant to be adding. I'm this case it was medium crystal malt and Belgian biscuit malt, so I presume the latter.

In that case, might using amylase reduce the flavouring benefits by turning the potentially flavoursome bits into things that will just be fermented away?

 

[brewpirate]

Amylase simply converts starch to sugar for the yeast and wont have any impact on flavor. If you decide to use amylase make sure to steep around 65c and boil real good to denature the amylase.

 

[Jonathan]

Thanks for clearing that up Mr Pirate, I'll give the amylase a try next time I think :-)