How to steep grains (and why)

Steeped grains add flavour, body, colour, body and head retention.

You can steep any of the following grains:

• Roasted grains: eg, chocolate malt, black malt, roast barley. These give the black colour and characteristic roasty/chocolate/coffee flavours to stouts, porters and other dark beers.
• Crystal malts: usually British malts, available in pale, medium, and dark. These give different degrees of amber colour, toffee flavours, and sweetness and help provide head retention and body. Good for bitters and pale ales. Can also be included in darker beers for flavour, sweetness, head retention, and body.
• Caramel malts: the continental European version of crystal malt (basically any malt with “cara” in the name).

The grains must be milled (cracked open) before steeping. Some home brew shops will mill grains for you on request, or you can pulse them in a coffee grinder, or put them in a plastic bag and crack them by rolling them with a rolling pin or glass bottle.

The grains are steeped in hot water for 20 to 30 minutes to extract their flavour and colour. Here is the process:

1. Heat 3 or 4 litres of water to 75C.
2. Pour in milled grains, cover pot with a lid, and leave 20 minutes or more.
3. Strain through a sieve or colander into another pot. Let as much liquid as possible trickle out.

The resulting liquid is then used for the boil (instead of water), as in previous recipes. The spent grains can be composted or fed to your chickens.

A simpler and less messy method is to use a grain bag instead of straining the liquid through a sieve. To steep grains using a grain bag:

1. Heat 3 or 4 litres of water to 75C.
2. Take the pot off the heat (you don’t want to burn the bag on the bottom of the pot), and line the inside of the pot with the bag.
3. Pour the grains into the bag.
4. Cover pot with a lid and steep 20 minutes or more.
5. Lift the bag from the pot and allow the liquid to drain off into the same pot.

A grain bag costs about $25 from a home brew shop, or you can sew one up from very fine mesh polyester Swiss voile curtain material. After use, empty out the grains, rinse the bag thoroughly, and stick it in the washing machine along with your clothes.

Recipes

RA Yak

This was an attempt to come up with something roughly like Fat Yak pale ale using a Coopers Real Ale kit (hence the name). It follows the same process as July’s Ale Ordinaire recipe, except that grains are steeped for 20 minutes beforehand, and the hops are added at different times. The beer has plenty of flavour and a nice fruity hop character.

Nelson Sauvin is a New Zealand hop variety that has an intense flavour with overtones of passionfruit and white wine. Cascade is an American variety with a citrus fruit flavour. Nelson Sauvin can be overpowering if you’re not careful. A blend of 1/3 Nelson Sauvin and 2/3 Cascade works very well.

As before, wait 3 weeks after bottling for best results. As it ages, the malt becomes drier, and the hop flavours recede noticeably and become better balanced and more integrated with the malt.

Ingredients

1 x Coopers Real Ale kit

1.5kg light liquid malt extract

200g medium crystal malt

20g Cascade hops (10 mins)

10g Nelson Sauvin hops (5 minutes)

US05 yeast

Method

1. Steep crystal malt 20 minutes (as per instructions above).
2. Put unopened can of malt extract in sink of hot water for 10 minutes to soften extract and make pouring easier.
3. While the liquid is coming to the boil, sanitise fermenter, airlock, grommet, a stirrer, and a clean sieve.
4. When liquid is boiling, take pot off heat and slowly pour in the malt extract, stirring constantly to minimise caramelisation on the bottom of the pot.
5. Bring back to boil (will froth up at first, so watch carefully in case it boils over).
6. Boil wort for 20 minutes.
7. 10 minutes before the end of the boil, add the Cascade hops.
8. 5 minutes before the end of the boil, add the Nelson Sauvin hops.
9. Meanwhile, soften unopened kit in hot water bath as per step 1. Pour into fermenter just before the 20 minutes is up.
10. When the 20 minutes is up, switch off heat, strain wort through the sieve to remove the hops (optional) and into the fermenter, stir with sanitised stirrer to dissolve the kit.
11. Top up with cold water to 23 litres, pitch yeast if below 24C, fit lid and airlock, and leave in a warm place for about 10 days to ferment.

Good as Golding

This recipe takes things a step further again. There is no kit to provide the bittering hops, so the wort needs to be boiled longer to extract enough bitterness from the hops. You need to allow about 3 hours for this one (including preparation and tidying up), but the results are worth it. This is a lovely lush and malty bitter that wouldn’t be out of place in an English pub.

Notes:

Malt: I made this recipe several times using English Muntons malt extract, which, although expensive, consistently gave me better pale ales and bitters than any other malt extract. However, to my dismay the importer has stopped bringing in Muntons extract and it can no longer be found in any brew shops in the Wellington area. I have therefore substituted Black Rock light extract. I’m sure the recipe will still work out fine but haven’t had a chance to try it with the Black Rock yet.

I also used the late extract method, which involves adding half the malt extract at the beginning of the boil and leaving the other half til 15 minutes from the end of the boil. This gives better hop utilisation, ie, allows more bitterness and flavour to be extracted from a given amount of hops. (The more malt extract is in a given amount of water, the lower the hop utilisation.)

Hops: East Kent Goldings is not always in stock. If you can’t find any, substitute NZ grown Goldings or UK or NZ Fuggles. Note the alpha acid level (6.75%AA), which is a measure of the bittering potential of the hops and is usually stated on the packaging. Even for the same hop variety, this varies from year to year and batch to batch. If your hops are (eg) 5.0%AA, you will need to add more hops to get the same bitterness (6.5/5.0 = 1.3, therefore multiply the weight of hops in the recipe by 1.3).

Ingredients

2 x Black Rock light liquid malt extract

250g medium crystal

125g dark crystal

100g carapils

25g East Kent Goldings (6.75%AA) (60 mins)

15g East Kent Goldings (6.75%AA) (15 mins)

Gervin ale yeast (or Nottingham or SO4)

Method

1. Steep malt grains 20 minutes (as per instructions above).
2. Meanwhile, put one unopened can of malt extract in sink of hot water for 10 minutes to soften extract and make pouring easier.
3. Before bringing the liquid to the boil pour in the malt extract, stirring to dissolve.
4. Add the first batch of hops.
5. Bring wort to boil (will froth up at first, so watch carefully in case it boils over).
6. Boil wort for 45 minutes.
7. Meanwhile soften up the second can of extract as per step 2 above.
8. After 45 minutes, remove kettle from heat, add the second can of malt extract and the second batch of hops.
9. Bring back to the boil and boil a further 15 minutes.
10. When the 15 minutes is up, switch off heat, strain wort through the sieve to remove the hops (optional) and into the fermenter.
11. Top up with cold water to 20 litres, pitch yeast if below 24C, fit lid and airlock, and leave in a warm place for about 10 days to ferment.