Steeping dark grains on the side for stout

[mattdee1]

I’m interested in trying the technique of steeping dark specialty grains and just adding the “tea” to the boil. Some believe this method takes some of the harshness out of the flavor of the highly kilned grains. Actually, I’ve already tried this with 1lb of chocolate malt on a recent brew and I really liked the result, but the problem is, that attempt was just kind of willy-nilly and I didn’t have any real specific “target” in mind; I just wanted to try the technique, with the attitude “whatever I get, I get.” What I ended up with was a really aromatic brown ale with a nice round flavor—pretty much exactly what I was after, but that exercise didn’t teach me anything about how to translate amounts of grain from mashing to steeping.

Now, I want to take a stout that I’ve brewed in the past, and try steeping the black malt, roasted barley, and possibly chocolate malt as well. My concern is that doing the steeping method will reduce the amount of flavor, color, and aroma that I get from the specialty malts, and the end result will be too weak in these areas if I use the same amounts as I did when I just mashed everything. On the other hand, if I increase their amounts to compensate for the different method, I’m afraid I’ll go too far.

I read somewhere that somebody (might have been Palmer?) found that with roasted barley and black malt, you can use the steeping method with the same amount of grains as mashing, and not lose anything, but with other specialty grains you may need to increase by up to 1.5x to get the same “contribution.”

Does anybody have any experience with this to share? Rules of thumb?

 

[m00ps]

depends on how hot you steep them. I usually see 160F suggested in recipes with steeping grains.

Just keep in mind, without any base malts for diatastic power (like in a partial mash) you wont get any gravity contribution from the specialty grains.

Also FWIW, I've added dark malts just for the end mashout before instead of mashing them the entire time. It definitely cuts down on the harsh roasty flavors