Roasted malt grain

[Instigator]

Some of the recipes in the database use a small amount of either roasted malt grain or roasted barley malt. My understanding is these need to be mashed. The recipes use a hot steep (put grain in boiled water, allow to steep). Is this creating fermentable sugars, or just extracting colour from the grain?

Spirit of ANZAC Ale

Irish Red Ale

Edit: one of the reasons I'm asking is if I buy a kg of these grains, should I also be remembering to hot steep these, not cold steep?

[MitchellScott]

9 hours ago, Instigator said:

My understanding is these need to be mashed

Yes - that is essentially what you are doing when you steep the grains in hot/cold water.

9 hours ago, Instigator said:

Is this creating fermentable sugars, or just extracting colour from the grain?

Both, you will get colour and some sugars from the grain, albeit you probably will not see the OG change due to the extremely small amounts of grain used. If it does increase, it will probably be only by 1 point.

9 hours ago, Instigator said:

should I also be remembering to hot steep these, not cold steep?

I would just stick to what the recipe calls for. Cold steeping is generally known to extract less "harsh" flavours from the grains but I have never really noticed any difference from when I used to brew extract and steep grains. Coopers puts some good thought and practices into their recipes so I'd stick to steeping how they say to.

[ben 10]

10 hours ago, Instigator said:

My understanding is these need to be mashed.

No they don't need to be mashed. Mashing involves base grains that have enzymes that will activate and turn starch to sugar,

[Instigator]

Hmm, right you are. I'm not sure what I was reading that made me think that. Certainly, it would be easier if some retailers would just say so on their pages so dopes like me can at least pretend we know what we're doing.

[Otto Von Blotto]

Roasted malt and roasted barley are different things. The latter isn't malted and provides a different flavour to roasted malt (which I think is also referred to as black patent). 

Correct, they don't need to be mashed. The roasting process would have stuffed the enzymes anyway. They will provide colour and flavour mainly, but there wouldn't be much in the way of fermentable sugar in them. 

[ben 10]

52 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

They will provide colour and flavour mainly,

Really good for a colour adjustment without much flavour too.

[Otto Von Blotto]

Yep I use them in a couple of beers for that. Works well.