{"id":282,"date":"2013-08-06T03:45:17","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T03:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paekakariki.org.nz\/?p=282"},"modified":"2013-08-06T03:48:09","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T03:48:09","slug":"august-2013-steeping-grains-method-and-recipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/august-2013-steeping-grains-method-and-recipes\/","title":{"rendered":"August 2013: Steeping grains: method and recipes"},"content":{"rendered":"
How to steep grains (and why)<\/b><\/p>\n
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Steeped grains add flavour, body, colour, body and head retention.<\/p>\n
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You can steep any of the following grains:<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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The grains are steeped in hot water for 20 to 30 minutes to extract their flavour and colour. Here is the process:<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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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:<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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Recipes<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
RA Yak <\/b><\/p>\n
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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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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\u2019re not careful. A blend of 1\/3 Nelson Sauvin and 2\/3 Cascade works very well.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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Ingredients<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1 x Coopers Real Ale kit<\/p>\n
1.5kg light liquid malt extract<\/p>\n
200g medium crystal malt<\/p>\n
20g Cascade hops (10 mins)<\/p>\n
10g Nelson Sauvin hops (5 minutes)<\/p>\n
US05 yeast<\/p>\n
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Method<\/b><\/p>\n
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Good as Golding<\/b><\/p>\n
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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\u2019t be out of place in an English pub.<\/p>\n
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Notes: <\/b><\/p>\n
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Malt<\/b>: 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\u2019m sure the recipe will still work out fine but haven\u2019t had a chance to try it with the Black Rock yet.<\/p>\n
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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.)<\/p>\n
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Hops<\/b>: East Kent Goldings is not always in stock. If you can\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ingredients<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
2 x Black Rock light liquid malt extract<\/p>\n
250g medium crystal<\/p>\n
125g dark crystal<\/p>\n
100g carapils<\/p>\n
25g East Kent Goldings (6.75%AA) (60 mins)<\/p>\n
15g East Kent Goldings (6.75%AA) (15 mins)<\/p>\n
Gervin ale yeast (or Nottingham or SO4)<\/p>\n
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Method<\/b><\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paekakariki.fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}