Homebrewers Association | AHA Forum
General Category => All Grain Brewing => Topic started by: coypoo on November 09, 2009, 06:46:54 PM
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Im an extract brewer and want to make the small step up to mini mashing. My question is, if im going to mash ~3lbs of malt, do i wait to add the specialty grains and step them like i normally would if I were doing an extract batch, or can I add them with the base malt and go from there? thanks
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Either way will work fine. Most brewers will mix all the malt together
Fred
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cool, that would save a lot of time. when you are mini mashing, what % of your gravity do you want to get from your malt, as much as possible?
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throw the specialty malts right in the mini mash. The only time you might want to steep the specialty malts separately is if you're using a lot of roasted malts, i.e. in a stout. The roasted malts can drop the pH too low on such a small mash.
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what % of your gravity do you want to get from your malt, as much as possible?
Yes, I would mash as much as your setup will allow. Do you use any software to calculate OG? I would go with 50-60% efficiency for a mini mash.
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cool, that would save a lot of time. when you are mini mashing, what % of your gravity do you want to get from your malt, as much as possible?
When I used to do partial mashes, I would try to get as much of my gravity as my partial-mash system would allow from the grains. I have a link to the method I used to use for partial mashing in my sig. Click on it to see a photo-representation of my process. BTW, with my partial-mash process, I usually only had to use about 1# DME to hit my target O.G.
Cheers!
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John Palmer's "How to Brew" has a great section on partial mashes and the inevitable move to all-grain.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/index.html (http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/index.html)
I also recommend a brewing software to help calculate OG and efficiency. More importantly they offer boil-off, dilution, and added extract calculators to help you hit your target gravity if and/or when you miss it.
Cheers
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John Palmer's "How to Brew" has a great section on partial mashes and the inevitable move to all-grain.
http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/index.html (http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/index.html)
I also recommend a brewing software to help calculate OG and efficiency. More importantly they offer boil-off, dilution, and added extract calculators to help you hit your target gravity if and/or when you miss it.
Cheers
The whole book is an essential reference, consider buying the 3rd edition (1st is on-line)
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Thanks for all the info, I do have beersmith, so i can use that and change the efficiency %. the tip about the roasted malts and the pH is good to know as the first beer I will probably make if I minimash will be a stout. Thanks again