Cold Steeping for Milk Stout

[zsprowls]

Hi all,

I am planning on brewing a milk stout (possibly cinnamon or chai milk stout) after the start of the year. I wanted to cold steep some of the grains, because my last milk stout had more of a roasted flavor than I was shooting for due to all of the dark grains. I wanted to stick the recipe out there for critique, but I also want to make sure the grains I am using (and amounts) will get good results with a cold steep.

Recipe idea:

Grains:
-1.5 lb Chocolate Malt
-1 lb Midnight Wheat
-1.5 lb roasted barley
8 lbs Muntons Plain Light DME
60 min hop - Northern Brewer
15 min - 1 lb lactose

My thought on the procedure is as follows:

Boil some water for 15 minutes (not sure on how much I need to cold steep 4lbs of grains...could use some advice there) Then bring the water to room temp and steep all the specialty grains for 24 hours.

Do my brew like normal (minus the steeping portion) and poor the grain tea in at the 15 minute mark.

As for the Chai and cinnamon - I figured I would just toss 2 tbs of cinnamon in with the priming solution and then when I bottle I was going to stick a chai tea bag in 6 or so of the bottles just to see how it turns out.

Thanks!

 

[dcp27]

is this a 5gal batch? if so, that's way too much dark malt for a milk stout, i'd at least cut it in half. cold steep plan sounds solid otherwise. i'm not sure the amount of water particularly matters for a cold steep, 1-2qt/lb should be fine

 

[zsprowls]

Thanks! I was under the impression that I needed to double or triple the grains for a cold steep, so I just tripled the grains and added midnight wheat to my base stout recipe that I use to play with additives such as molasses, coffee, vanilla, and even a habanero extract I made (1cc was to much.... I still have most of that batch sitting in bottles.....).

Do you think if I cut the listed grain bill in half I will have a solid milk stout to play with? I would like to add some chai directly to some of the bottles on this one. For a future batch I would like to do mint just to see how that goes. I am basically a fan of putting together a solid base recipe and then playing with additives every time I brew it again.

Thanks again!

 

[dcp27]

I'm certainly no expert in the cold steep as I've only tried it once as I typically go the route of adding it at vorlauf instead, but I didn't find the need to add extra. It just resulted in a more mellow roast. after your overnight cold soak, it might not be a bad idea to dunk the grain sack while you're heating up the brew water to rinse it off and get a lil more extraction.

looking back at my notes that beer was actually a milk stout too and 1.5#s of dark malt was what I used, altho I did add them during sparge to filter out the small bits not near the end of boil so a lil different than your process