am I mini mashing or still just steeping grains?

[San_Diego_Matt]

I'm making my way through the Sunday Session archives and recently just completed the show with Christian Clavamox or whatever from Triple Rock and they were talking about Daniella's first brew and how she mini mashed.

Nearly all of my brewing knowledge has come from the guys I brew with. I'm still brewing extract, but have always added some specialty grains and from what I heard on the last show I listened to, I'm confused as to whether I'm just steeping or actually minimashing.

My normal process is to throw my water into my kettle and get it warming. When it reached 170 I cut the flame and add my grain sack (heh) and let it sit in the water for 30 minutes.

From what Christian said on the show, unless I'm soaking base malts, I'm not really mini mashing. I haven't ever soaked a base malt that I'm aware of. Since I'm still brewing extract, I really don't know shit about the actual malts yet. The guys I brew with (they're still brewing extract too) always add a little Belgian aromatic to their gran sack along with whatever other grains the recipe calls for. At the most, there's a pound or a pound and a half in the sack.

So, help me out here. Steeping or mini mashing. If I'm not minimashing, what do I need to do to get to mini mashing?

Thanks

[Frankenhop]

I'm making my way through the Sunday Session archives and recently just completed the show with Christian Clavamox or whatever from Triple Rock and they were talking about Daniella's first brew and how she mini mashed.

Nearly all of my brewing knowledge has come from the guys I brew with. I'm still brewing extract, but have always added some specialty grains and from what I heard on the last show I listened to, I'm confused as to whether I'm just steeping or actually minimashing.

My normal process is to throw my water into my kettle and get it warming. When it reached 170 I cut the flame and add my grain sack (heh) and let it sit in the water for 30 minutes.

From what Christian said on the show, unless I'm soaking base malts, I'm not really mini mashing. I haven't ever soaked a base malt that I'm aware of. Since I'm still brewing extract, I really don't know shit about the actual malts yet. The guys I brew with (they're still brewing extract too) always add a little Belgian aromatic to their gran sack along with whatever other grains the recipe calls for. At the most, there's a pound or a pound and a half in the sack.

So, help me out here. Steeping or mini mashing. If I'm not minimashing, what do I need to do to get to mini mashing?

Thanks

In order to mini mash you'll need to include those base malts. Your specialty grains have already already had their sugars converted and it's the base malts that have the active enzymes you need. So basically, specialty only = steeping, base malts added = mini mash.

Though at 170 you're way too hot for mashing, at least as far as I know. You'd want to add your base malts and hold temperature at more around 150-155 F, not 170. Sorry I can't help out more, I skipped extract and went straight to full-boil all-grain... so my knowledge on minimashing, steeping, and extract in general is still likely lacking.

[San_Diego_Matt]

170 may not be the actual temperature that I'm adding the grains. I haven't brewed in a while as I'm still working my way through the stash of previous brews...it's hard drinking a lot of homebrew when you're not yet kegging it.

Thanks for the help though

[Frankenhop]

170 may not be the actual temperature that I'm adding the grains. I haven't brewed in a while as I'm still working my way through the stash of previous brews...it's hard drinking a lot of homebrew when you're not yet kegging it.

Thanks for the help though

Make friends with the neighbors, that's what I did.

[herbie53]

What they said, no base malts=only steeping. In a mini mash you will want to use water thats 10-13 degrees over your mash temp, as the water temp will drop when grains are introduced.

[BDawg]

10-13 degree drop is accurate when you are mashing at around 1-1.5 quarts per lb of grain. If you are using more water per lb, then the drop will be much less.

[linuxelf]

Yeah, the biggest difference between steeping and mashing is the density of the mash. If you're filling a pot and putting in a grain bag, you're probably exceeding 1.25qt water/lb of grain. For a mash to convert the sugars in your grain, you need to have a base grain (something with convertible sugars) and a thick mash so that the enzymes can do their work. If you were to, say, steep 2 lbs of 2row in 3 gallons of water, or something, it would be too dilute for the enzymes to do their work.