Mad_Scientist wrote:chino1975 wrote:...not sure if this is the right place for a follow up question, but any recommendations on handling the "steeping" grains? Read some old post here talking about adding them at mash out. Should I just add all the grains at once or add the steeping grains during the last 30 minutes or so since this is a single temp mash?
I may be the guilty one for saying that. I'm just following what Gordon Strong does, in his book, "Brewing Better Beer".
Gordon Strong is very good on this stuff. Listen to some podcasts.
hashie actually raised this subject
here back in 2010
. Have a read of that thread as it is quite interesting. A lot of it is counter-intuitive. For example, if you only steep the specialty grains, their flavour can be much more pronounced. To understand this, I suppose a good analogy would be that if you overcook some foods, they can become bland.
In saying that though, if you want to copy someone's recipe, you really should be just doing what they did with their specialty grains. For example the Schwarzbier I brew, (mentioned in the link above), if I only add the specialty grains at mash-out, they are too pronounced for me. I could probably do ten side by side brews and work out the perfect way of using the perfect amount of specialty grains at the perfect times but really?
Any more comments on this specialty grain thing though would probably best go to hashie's thread otherwise they will get lost here. If the Gordon Strong podcast on this (I think it was a Beersmith one) hasn't been mentioned in the other thread, it would be great if someone could find it and do so.
Understanding IBU's
There's just one sentence in one of Mad-Scientist's great posts above that mightn't be reading as well as it should be. The sentence was, "The little style chart on page 175 shows the BJCP style guidelines and the 50-90 IBU is Tinseth!" I would re-write that sentence as follows...
"The little style chart on page 175 shows the BJCP style guidelines and the 50-90 IBU is based on laboratory (and possibly perceived), measurements of IBU's. In other words, these measurements are based on actual, real-life bitterness. Several very basic formulas are available to brewers to help them try and match a laboratory (actual, real-life) IBU. The least primitive and therefore the best formula for all-grain brewers to use is the Tinseth formula."
Actual IBU's (Perceived and Laboratory IBU's)
There is really not much great information on this whole area as the whole area is based on some very unsound premises and history for a start. Here is my current opinion...
The most accurate IBU measurement has to be the perceived IBU's of a decent sample of people. The problem is that this sample of people would have to have some idea of what an IBU was and the only way they can gain a perception of this is through using a laboratory measurement but a laboratory cannot measure all the bitterness's that certain tongues can.
So we have this great circular reference going on.
However, perceived or laboratory IBU's are the best of what we have to work with at present. It gets worse though...
Estimated IBU's (IBU's calculated by formulas).
The only tools we have to try and emulate the desired actual bitterness levels above are formulas and they are pretty crap. For a start, there are three major ones and they will all give you a different estimate (sometimes incredibly different) based on the same recipe. All the formulas are flawed in their logic but the one that has the least errors, especially for all-grain brewers, is the Tinseth formula.
The Very Hard Lesson to Learn
The awful thing about brewing when starting out is that numbers and formulas can lead us to believe that if we bugger them up by a fraction here or a fraction there, it will destroy our brew. The reality is that this just doesn't happen in all-grain.
The hardest lesson to learn in numbers is that when you hear, read or see them elsewhere (other software,sites or books), they'll often be wrong, at best imprecise and nearly always misleading. If you learn enough about the numbers though (on this site because where else is there really?) you'll start to develop a real wisdom and confidence. Here is what I think would happen...
1. You'll start out with confidence as the BIABacus and members here will warn you if you are doing something major wrong.
2. After a few brews of careful measuring, you will start to see how hard it is to get accurate real-life measurements.
3. After more brews, you'll see that, even if you actually make a major mistake, the beer will actually probably still taste very good.
4. After more reading and educating yourself here, you'll see that on other forums, one brewer will post a recipe and that ten others will read it in ten different ways because, for starters, they are not using a common language such as we have almost finalised here on this site.
5. You'll see in those threads on other forums posts form consecutive brewers say, "This recipe is great," but you will also be wise enough to see that Brewer 1 has brewed it in a totally different way from Brewer 2 and Brewer 187 for that matter.
6. You'll then have tremendous confidence to realise that you have a great deal of latitude to play with, especially in all-grain. You'll be able to scientifically practice some artistry. You will know what changes in brewing processes actually really do make a difference and which ones are probably just aberrations of a single brew.
7. Finally you'll be able to hand on to other brewers (and hopefully quantify) what you have, for certain, discovered when it comes to a brewing practice or a recipe.
Anyway, I think I got drunk writing all that. Long work day, then mates around for some beers and then BIABrewer
.
PP
. Helles will be a great beer for you in the Toowoomba summer. The recipe itself looks good. The only change you might make is to forget the biscuit malt and just go 2% melanoidin buit it is neither here nor there as I don't think 1% will really do much. It's not my area of expertise though so I could be wrong. 
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