Beer Forum

I'm doing some experimentation with steeping my roasted malts instead of including them in the mash for various reasons. From How to Brew, it looks like the yield when steeping Chocolate Malt isn't as high as when mashing (http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-4-1.html).

Two questions...

1) Is this the case? Do people normally increase the amount of chocolate malt they use in an extract recipe by ~50% to account for it?

2) Would the yield be the same if I were to steep this at room temperature overnight rather than at ~150 F for 30 minutes?

The second question is based on my desire to try steeping roasted grains without added heat overnight to reduce the astringency I extract from it.

Have you considered trying to replace a % of your grain bill with any of the "debittered" dark malts from Weyermann? They'll give you the color with diminished astringency. Carafa I is around the 320L, Carafa II is 400-450 I think, and Carafa III is high 500's.

Is your primary goal to avoid astringency?

For #2, yes. And yes, I've used de-bittered black and carafa. Love 'em