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How much water do I use for steeping specialty grains?

philm63

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I am working on recipes for full-boil extract brewing, and I thought I saw somewhere that the steeping of the specialty grains should be done in a smaller amount of water as opposed to the usual 2.5 gallons called for in the typical extract recipe. I thought it was somewhere around .9 gallons of water per pound of grain, or possibly less?

How much water should be used per pound of specialty grains? Can I steep my specialty grains in a smaller pot to more easily control the temperature, and start the remaining water in my larger pot to bring it up to temperature and then dump the wort from the smaller pot into the larger pot and start my boil?

Can someone please shed some light on this topic?
 
When I do a full volume extract batch. I use 5.5 - 6.5 gal of water. bring the temp up to 142 reduce the flame and put the grain bag in let them steep till the temp hits 155 then cut the heat and let them sit for 15 - 30 min. remove grains and crank the heat to boil
 
I think most kit recipes will say to use 2.5 gallons. I find that with my brew pot 2 gallons is best. The thing is you are steeping and not mashing. You can have more water to pound of grain. I came up with 2 gallons because that is the amount I need to have the grains fully submerged in my kettle. If you have a different shape of kettle, you may find more or less is needed to obtain that. I most often brew all grain now, but when steeping grains for an extract batch I typically used 1 to 1.5 pounds of grain total. Usually 1 pound is as large of an amount that I wanted.
 
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