Steeping Munich malt

[YeastintheEast]

Hey all,
Great resource here and my first time posting. I'm a complete newb when it comes to brewing, just bottled my first batch the other day and I'm patiently (or at least trying to be patient) waiting to see how it turned out. I'm planning on doing a second batch soon but have a couple of questions I'm hoping someone can clear up for me. I want to do a Nut Brown Ale for my next batch. After reading Palmer's guide to home brewing, I noticed he mentioned either adding hops or steeped grains to the batch to enhance the flavor of liquid malt extract kits so I thought I'd give it a try this time around. I'm currently planning on: 1.7kg of Black Rock Nut Brown Ale lme, 2kg of "medium" dme, nugget hops for bittering and fuggles for finishing, American Ale Yeast (Safale US-05). I want to try steeping a bit this time around so I ordered some Caramel 60l malt and Munich EBC1.9 malt. Some of these ingredients may be completely off, I don't know, as I said, I don't really know what I'm doing yet but also have very limited choices where I live in regards to homebrew ingredients/supplies. Anyways, after getting the Munich malt I found out that it needs to be mashed and can't really be used for steeping. I wasn't really planning on getting into mashing just yet, but I don't want this malt to go to waste.

Can I just "steep" the munich malt by itself in ~70C water for about 60 minutes? If I do this, can I include the caramel malt at the same time or should I do the caramel malt afterwards?
I don't have a grain bag. Is it really necessary if I have a strainer? Couldn't I just let the Munich malt and the Caramel malt float free and filter them out via strainer?
The Munich was listed as EBC 1.9 which, in my understanding makes it a lovibond rating of .95? (The resources I saw said that EBC = lovibond times two?) This just seemed really low compared to other malts.
Finally, my first brew was a mess for the first 36 hours when the Krausen was really piling up and apparently my airlock couldn't handle all the pressure causing the lid of the fermenting bucket to constantly pop off. Even a blow off tube I rigged couldn't handle it. I think there may have not been enough headroom. What's a reasonable amount of headroom for a 20l bucket (Approx. 5 gallons)?

Thanks all in advance and sorry for the long post.

 

[RM-MN]

It appears that your Black Rock Nut Brown Ale lme kit is prehopped so you wouldn't want to add bittering hops to it. You also don't need or even want to boil this kit so instead of adding the Fuggles to the boil you could use them as dry hops or just save them for another brew. They keep best if frozen. I'd probably wait with your malted grains too and use them when you start without a prehopped kit. Look in the recipe section (center of the brown/red banner at the top of the page) to get ideas about how to make a proper beer from separate ingredients. These will require boiling (your Nugget bittering hops will require that) so make sure you have a pot large enough (20L should work, bigger is better) and a way to boil at least 12L of wort.

Your Munich malt will need to be mashed but that is much easier than you think. All you need is to put the crushed grains into water than has been heated to ~66C and let them steep (mash) for 30 to 60 minutes. Your Caramel malt will go in with this even though it doesn't need mashed. I don't know what you have for a strainer but the grain particles will be pretty small if the grain is crushed properly so I'd suggest you find a fine mesh bag to mash in. Paint strainer bags work well as does a bag made from Swiss voile curtain material. From what I can find, Munich malts range in color from 6L to about 9L.

As you have found out, beer requires a bit of head space when it is fermenting. Your 20L bucket will probably be fine for about 16L batches, especially if you keep the temperature at the low end of what the yeast like. I like to ferment in a room that is 16-17C as that limits how fast the yeast work and keeps them from throwing off flavors. That temperature control is the single most important step in making good tasting beer.

 

[YeastintheEast]

Thanks very much for the reply RM. I was under the impression that adding hops and boiling (even if not required) to a lme just increased the "freshness" of the beer, but apparently that isn't so. I'll keep your suggestions in mind so I don't end up with an exploding fermenter bucket again, haha. I'll see if I can get my hands on some non-prehopped lme and experiment with that.

 

[RM-MN]

For a little more money you can get dry malt extract. You can weigh out just the amount you need for your batch instead of needing to use an entire can or bottle of liquid malt extract. If you get the light dry malt it won't have as many adjuncts and you can then make the recipe you want instead of what the company made with their darker malt extracts. This gives you the freedom to create the entire recipe as you want it.

With a little care and money you could start with the grains and do the mashing to get exactly what you want. It isn't hard at all, it just takes a little more attention to details like temperature. Look for the term BIAB on this forum. It takes a strainer bag, one pot and perhaps a colander (you can do no sparge BIAB without a colander for a little loss of efficiency) I bought a Corona style grain mill so I control how well the grain gets crushed/ground and a pair of paint strainer bags and was making all grain batches in my 20 litre pot, just 10 litre batches but by the time I finished one, it was hard to go back and do the extract kit I had already bought.

 

[unionrdr]

Mashing is def done for 1 hour. Steeping would be done for 30 minutes. Mashing is done with 1-1.5qts of water per pound of crushed grain. I use a 5 gallon (20qt) SS kettle with a cake cooling rack in the bottom to keep the 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag of grains from burning/melting on the bottom.
The mash is generally done at 152-155F constant temp for the 1 hour mash.
I've used pre-hopped LME cans,like Cooper's as a flame out addition in PB/PM BIAB batches & it works fine. But I also mash 5-6lbs of grains,which would be about 50% of the fermentables. So I can use the freshly mashed wort for hop additions & save the pre-hopped can for a flame out addition (called late extract addition).

 

[KeystoneHomebrew]

You can simply let the Munich and Crystal sit for an hour instead of the 30 minutes. Since you're looking more for flavor than any type of sugar contribution, you don't have to watch the temperature like a hawk. Simply keep it from getting too hot or worse boiling.

I would hold onto the Nugget hops for a next batch, but I also still boil my pre-hopped kits. A 15 minute boil, with the Fuggles addition the last 5 min of that boil would make a tasty tasty brew.

Aaron

 

[unionrdr]

Boiling changes the hop profile,making flavor & aroma additions lean towards bittering. not a good idea if you want the intended flavor of the pre-hopped extract to contribute what's in it. And mash temps def matter. Lower temp,more fermentable,higher temp,less fermentable.

 

[YeastintheEast]

Thanks again for all the great information everyone. Really nice to have so many more experienced brewers to help me out. Maybe I should make the push to all-grain sooner than I was planning.

 

[unionrdr]

Well,replacing DME with a partial mash & the can as a late addition is simpler than most people think when they actually try it. I was no different,& am now going on my 7th PM.