Confused about grains!

[jameswipps]

Hi,

I'm quite new to brewing and I am going to be making some beer and i'm a bit confused about one bit. Basically i'm following a recipe where it says:

7-8 pounds amber malt extract
.5 pound chocolate malt specialty grain
2.5-3 ounces Cascade or Fuggles bittering hops (12-16 HBU)
.5 ounce Tettnanger finishing hops
Wyeast #1084 or #1028

now with the malt speciality grain what exactly do i do? i read about a thing called mashing, so am i supposed to mash this and then once its obsorbed water just pour it into the wort with everything else?

its probably best to answer this like i'm a 2 year old cos i've tried to read it in places and i didn't really understand!!!

I'd appreciate any help with this.

thanks,

James

[mark]

This is what's called an extract brew - the bulk of the fermentable sugars comming from the malt extract.
The speciality grains (in this case chocolate malt) are steeped in a volume of hot water for about 30 minutes usually in a muslin bag, the resultant liquid is then added to the main volume.
The steeping process rinses the sugars and flavours from the speciality grains, this helps add interesting flavours and colour to the malt extract.
Some people advise steeping twice or rinsing the muslin bag with hot water to get more sugars out.

I don't know the best temperature to steep the grains though.....probably somewhere around 65 degrees C, but take some further advice on this.

ATB

[GrowlingDogBeer]

What I tend to do, and it may be wrong but it works for me is.

I have a Mashing / Sparging bag which I hang inside the boiler (25 litre). I then heat the whole of the water/liquer to about 68C then add the speciality grains and leave them in the boiler for about 60 mins keeping the temperature constant at around 66C. I stir the grains a bit during that time. Afterthe hour is up I then lift the bag out of the boiler complete with grains and continue heating the water. Just before the water reaches boiling point I add the Malt Extract and continue to boil. As soon as the Hot Break (the manic foaming / boiling over bit) is finished I then add the bittering hops.

The grains that were in the bag are great on the compost heap, so are all the hops once they've been boiled as well.

Hope that helps you.

[lancsSteve]

No need to MASH speciality grains for an extract recipe:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13.html

Details of procedure start on page 3: http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-3.html

Read the chapter (I'd say buy the book as well)

[jameswipps]

ah brilliant thanks - this is all really helpful! got a much better idea of what im doing now!