How much specialty grains?

[sundaypapers]

I'm doing my fourth extract batch and I want to experiment a little bit. I have two vials of yeast left over that I got as a precautionary measure, oktoberfest lager and Hefeweizen ale, both white labs, and I wanted to experiment a little bit and make two random batches with maybe an extract blend and a bag of specialty grains. My question is how much grains do I need for a five gallon batch? I don't really have a preference of what I make, I just wanted a round about idea of the ratio I needed to go with. The other kits I've had have been about a pound and a half of specialty grains, is this standard or should I do more/less? Also, if you can recommend any grains in particular I'm definitely interested. I've done a little bit of research on them and their characteristics, and I mainly want to just experiment and find out what each ingredient adds as far as flavors go.

 

[Guerrilla]

Yea if you really just want to start learning about the grains around 1lb should be good. If you want to go to 1.5 or 2 you can but just know it may start to dominate, some grains can dominate at way less than a pound. Some specialty grain i like are:
Belgian Aromatic
Victory
Honey Malt
And for crystal/caramel malts some interesting ones are:
Carastan/Light Carastan
Belgian Special B

Good luck and im doing a similar experiment, it will take a while, by doing SMaSH brews then once i get through the base grains im moving to testing the specialty/caramel stuff!

 

[sweetcell]

there is no hard-and-fast rule around how much specialty grain to use since it depends on the grain. certain grains like honey malt and special B need to be used in moderation (start with a half pound total of these), while you can go big on others like base malts and lighter crystals. you can mix & match to make up a pound and a half or two pounds, but i wouldn't recommend 2 pounds of special B! suggestion: look at other recipes to get an idea of what combos work. then, either copy a recipe or come up with your own. if you do the latter, post your idea/combo on this board and ask folks for their opinion. might save you from brewing some harsh or weird

aside: if you use the octoberfest lager yeast, are you going to lager the beer? make a huge starter, ferment cool, then store it near freezing for a month or more?

 

[Guerrilla]

Yea i had 8oz Special B in my Brown ale and it gave it a nice dark fruit/ raisen character. Really use a brewing calc, hopville is easy and free, and type in your recipe. It will tell you around how dark of a beer you will get from your recipe along with some other parameters and form this you can probably get an idea of what you will be looking at.

 

[sundaypapers]

Sweetcell, I'm not really sure if I want to lager or not. I kind of don't mind experimenting in all kinds of ways. I may end up just letting it go in the 70 range and see what happens. I really just want to try and see what I can get with different ingredients and temps, just have fun and experiment. Thanks for the heads up on the grain ratios! Cheers!

 

[sundaypapers]

Guerilla, victory was one I was looking at, for sure. I really enjoy rye but I have a few apprehensions about using it. I've only had one beer where the eye really was the star and it struck a good note with me, but I don't know if I want to use it this time around or not. They said that a typical rye has 15-20 percent rye and this one had 25 percent. It was delicious. Thanks for the info, I definitely have a good idea of where I want to begin now. Thanks for the help! Cheers!

 

[sweetcell]

Sweetcell, I'm not really sure if I want to lager or not. I kind of don't mind experimenting in all kinds of ways. I may end up just letting it go in the 70 range and see what happens. I really just want to try and see what I can get with different ingredients and temps, just have fun and experiment.

yup, that's what brewing is all about - have fun on your adventure! just be advised that you won't have a lager beer on your hands if you don't follow the steps i outlined. it will likely be tasty, but it won't have traditional lager characteristics (lightness, crispness, etc). fyi, beers that use lager yeast at ale temperatures are called california common beers or steam beers - yes, as in anchor steam (although it isn't a steam beer anymore).

 

[sundaypapers]

If I happen to make an anchor steam type beer by mistake it might just be one of the best days of my life. I'm looking forward to experimenting!

 

[ludomonster]

With the Hefe Yeast, you could make a dunkeweizen. You can make one with a good balance of Munich, wheat, and pale malt. However, you could also use Munich and wheat extracts and then add specialty grains. You probably want to limit your very dark roasted grains, such as debittered black or patent black to less than 1% of the total grist, but you might be able to get away with up to 5% of something like chocolate. Considering the extracts, you could shoot for 10-15% with another malt or two, using a quarter lb of Vienna, Victory, Biscuit, Honey or Special B malts and up to 1 lb of a crystal malt. Play with the amounts until you get to the appropriate color.

 

[Guerrilla]

Sweetcell, I'm not really sure if I want to lager or not. I kind of don't mind experimenting in all kinds of ways. I may end up just letting it go in the 70 range and see what happens. I really just want to try and see what I can get with different ingredients and temps, just have fun and experiment. Thanks for the heads up on the grain ratios! Cheers!

Well a fairly easy way to lager w/out a cooler is with one of those plastic tubs and frozen water bottles/ice. I can keep my temp w/in a few degrees once the wort and surrounding water are at the same temp, not perfect but good enough for most purposes.