First Time Extract Brewer

Northern Brewer General
1

Hey guys, I know this might seem a little backwards, but I really have only ever done All Grain, and am only now after about 7 years, planning on trying some extract brewing in the evenings.

Obviously the process seems fairly straight foreward, but I just had a few questions before I get started.

  1. How long is the steeping process? I have read about 45 min but are there other time frames?

  2. How much grain should I use? Lowest amounts / Highest amounts ?

I’m going to be doing 19l batches in a 18.5 l pot. Mostly low gravity session beers, like bitters and stouts for my nytrogen system.

my first recipe will likely be an ordinary bitter around 1.040 or so (3.9%)

here is what I have so far

2 Kg DME (light)
500g Marris Otter
300g Carastan (30L)
200g Carapils / or maybe some wheat instead

That’s a total of 1kg of grains - how would you adjust the amounts to get the most out of the steep. Don’t know if that is too much Carapils or not.

2

Steeping the grains will just extract flavours and colours, not convert starches and extract sugars. Are you doing partial mash? Marris Otter requires mashing.

There are a few ways to steep grains. When I did extract I steeped them for about 20 minutes in 160F water. I think it was 1/2gal of water to 1lb of grain. I think 20% was about the max grains you’d want to use, if I remember correctly. The amounts you have seem a bit high. You’ve got about 4.4lbs of grain, so I think you wouldn’t want to go much past .9lb at most. You might be able to use .4 carstan and .4 caraplis (although the effectiveness of carapils if debatable). I don’t have any experience with carstan, though.

Go Leafs!

3

Actually I think it would only be 2.2 lbs of grain. Then the 2 kg of extract.

I can do a partial mash - would not be a problem. I guess if you only get flavor then the Carapils would be useless here.

So if I were to do a true extract brew, I would only tend to go with the specialty malts like the carastan in this case?

Screw it then, I’ll just do a mini mash in the bag, then boil with the extract.

4

I think extract brewers use carapils for head retention, but some debate if it really works. And yes, a “true extract” would be just specialty grains.

If you mash all that, you’ll get a higher OG. Maybe up to 1.050. Not a problem, unless you want to keep it lower.

5

I do want to keep the OG a little lower, but I’m not too picky. If I’m going to mini mash anyway, I might just bring the extract down a bit.

My preference would be to do the all-grain int the bag deal, but I do want a full 19-23l batch, not the 11.5 that the BIAB would get me with my smaller pot.

So I figure if I mash about half the grain, then top up with extract it should get me to the same place. The idea here is just to save as much time as I can, and get more brewing in.