AG Brewer clueless about extract brewing

Grains, malts, hops, yeast, water and other ingredients used to brew. Recipe reviews and suggestions.

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rrosa
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AG Brewer clueless about extract brewing

Post by rrosa »

Hi All,

I have been an AG brewer since the start and now I got a Weyermann Hefe-Weizen extract jug from a local competition. I am planning to make a dunkelweizen with it tomorrow. I don't have a hefeweizen yeast at hand so I will use Brewferm Blanche. I could also use S-33 but I guess BB would be more interesting. I also have a White Labs Belgian Wit but I would like to keep that for a... Belgian Wit! (I could propagate the yeast to use in both batches but I want to keep it simple this time.)

Anyway, my main question is about steeping the grain to add to the extract. I have seen one recipe saying to steep wheat malt for 30min at 160F, one to steep chocolate malt for 5-10min at 180F, one to steep crystal malt for 30min at 150F, one to steep both crystal and chocolate for 15min at 170F, and so on. The times and temperatures vary a lot and some are way above sacharification temperature. I guess it makes sense for wheat, munich and similar malts to be in a sacharification temperature and not necessarily chocolate and crystal, but what is the advantage in using a higher temperature for these latter malts? Maybe to help gelatinization? What is the logic behing the times and temperatures?

As for the choice of grains, I am not sure yet, but I am thinking about using dark wheat malt and melanoidin, and maybe some caraaroma or chocolate or franco-belges coffee kiln. In this regard, since I am not completely mashing the grains, should I increase the amount of grains compared to what I would use if I was doing AG? And how can I calculate the SG contribution of these grains?

Lastly but not least, the extract was donated by a malting company to be given at the competition and they are 1 1/2 years old. Should they still be good? What is the shelf life of these extracts assuming good storage?

Thanks in advance,
Ricardo - A homebrewer in Brazil - www.cervejarte.org - www.cervejarte.org/acervacarioca
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rrosa
Pale Ale
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Post by rrosa »

Sorry, I think I should have posted the question above in the "Techniques, Methods, Tips & How To" section. Actually, looking at that section and to John Palmer's online book clarified most of my main question.
Ricardo - http://cervejarte.org/blog
MacBook 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2Gb SDRAM running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8
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