RSSSo in the Beginners Guide to Brewing – Part 1 I told you about how the best place to start home brewing is to buy a nice beer kit from Williams Brewing or any local home brewing shop. These kits include all of the ingredients you need to make a great home brew, are easy to follow and normally make a good first beer. The only bad part with a beer kit is that you are not really making anything special. It is like painting by the numbers. In the end, you have something cool that you created, but there are also millions of people out there that probably completed the same painting…
So as a beginning brewer, how can you take a beer kit and easily make it into a custom beer that you can be proud to show off? The answer is easy: Steep a pound of malted cracked specialty grain in your water as it comes to a boil…that is it. I know, doesn’t sound that unique or special, but steeping the malted cracked grain adds a freshness to your beer, extra color, and depending on what malted cracked grain you use and in what amounts you can create an awesomely unique flavor…plus yeast loves fresh grain sugars which results in a stronger fermentation and a higher alcohol content.
A quick explanation of malted grains: Malted grains make up the base malt in any beer and they come in both whole and cracked forms. Malting is the process of soaking and leaving out the barley or wheat grains to allow them to begin to germinate. The germination process unlocks the starches in the grain. Once this happens the grains are then cooked at controlled temperatures in these giant kilns to create a roasted look, and depending on how long and what temperatures they are cooked, the darkness and the flavor of the resulting malt can go from really light like a lagar base, all the way to the almost black stout base.
Pro’s use only malted grains to brew their beers because it gives them full control over their recipes. For the home brewer, depending on how much time and how dedicated you are, you can go from using all grain to what I do most of the time which is use the malted grain mixed with liquid malt extract. You would be surprised how nice this comes out. Not as good as an all grain recipe, because nothing is as good as that, but this process comes pretty darn close.
Whole malted grain or cracked malted grain? I like to use the cracked grain over the whole grain because it is ready to go right out of the bag. Just toss the cracked malted grain in a steeping bag and steep away. The grain itself costs about 2-3 bucks a pound and a steeping bag costs about 5 bucks, so for about 7 or 8 bucks you can really kick your beer kit up a notch.
Choosing your cracked malt: When you look up specialty grains at your local brew shop, you will see a ton of choices all with different degree Lovibond ratings. A Lovibond rating is a color rating. The lower the Lovibond rating the lighter the malt. So a 15L crystal malt is really light like a pils and a 580L roast barley is almost black and would be good in a stout or porter…Now this is where you as a newbe home brewer can start your experimenting and creating your first master piece. I am not going to get into what you should choose to steep in your beer because whatever you choose should be awesome, but to get a base understanding I would look on Williams Brewing’s site, they give you tips on what might work in what types of beers…
Steeping instructions First toss your pound of cracked malt into your steeping bag. Tie the top so the grain does not escape and toss it in your water. Stir your water about every 5 minutes as the water works it’s way up to a boil. When the temperature of your water reaches 170 degrees lift out your grain bag and let it drain into the pot. Don’t squeeze it, just let it drain. When it is done draining, set your bag off to the side and proceed with your kit as usual. Make sure to take your original gravity reading when you are done because steeping these grains will boost up your OG because you are adding more sugars to your wort.
Next time we will discuss tossing away the warmth of the beer kits and constructing your first partial extract beer from scratch. Stay tuned!
Feed me. The Sarg is thirsty.
it is on like Donkey Kong…I have 10 gallons of home brew in the fridge…and another 5 gallons aging in the closet which should be good to drink by next Sunday!