rice cooker for grains

[randomiser]

Hi all,
I have yet to use grains in my homebrew. Have stuck to kit and malt but keen to add some crystal or pilsener grain to next one. Problem is the stove is rooted. I do however have a rice cooker that holds 4 litres of water. Is this the worst idea in the history of homebrewing or could it hypothetically work?

[rwh]

Nah, that could work. Just make sure you switch it off at the wall when the water gets to 70°C and switch it back on when the water drops below 65°C and you should be right.

Or you could use the coffee plunger method. Lower efficiency, but easy as.

[Chris]

It could work, but it probably won't.

It's too hard to determine the temperature of the water that is used to steep the grains.

Also, microwaves heat unevenly, so parts of the water will be 98*C, and others 30*C. The same happens on a stove, but at least you can stir. If your water gets too hot, the grains will release tannins, that don't taste all that good.

I'd suggest boiling your kettle 2/3 of the way, pouring it into a pot, and letting it cool to the right temp before steeping.

[rwh]

Oh, I was assuming you had an electric rice cooker, not a microwave one...

[chris.]

Just use hot tap water. Temperature isn't really that crutial as your just rinsing the crystalised sugars from the grain. Granted hotter water will release these sugars more effectivley. But for the small amount of grain your using it's negligable.

I personally prefer to boil the run off to kill of any bacteria etc. I don't think it's all that necessary (I believe the kilning would have killed the lacto & other nasties) but I prefer to do it just to be safe. Maybe you could bring the runoff to the boil in the microwave / rice cooker?

Edit: Forget the Pilsner malt. It's a base malt & needs to be mashed. & It won't really contribute much flavour unless your talking KG's.

[rwh]

Edit: Forget the Pilsner malt. It's a base malt & needs to be mashed. & It won't really contribute much flavour unless your talking KG's.

Or use Carapils, which is a type of pilsener crystal.

[lethaldog]

I always steep in hot tap water and have not had any dramas!

[Clean Brewer]

I used an Electric Rice Cooker to steep my grains on Saturday, worked a treat, I just put my water in, placed it on cook and let heat up to about 70c, dropped the grains in, checked temp and when it was right, turned rice cooker off, placed lid on and it held temp for whole 1/2 hour.

I then just heat some water in seperate pot to 70c and soaked grains a second time again in cooker, better than my 6 pack esky..

[Kevnlis]

What about the slowcookers? They go up to 6L I think and have a manual "warm" setting where you could keep the food warm after it had finished cooking. Would be interesting to find out what temp that is. I suppose you could always rig up a fridgemate to control it on the "cook" setting.

Stay tuned to this channel

[Clean Brewer]

Yes, rice cooker has a warm setting aswell but I found that once the temp was correct and it was switched off it held temp very steadily due to the fact that the cooker itself stays warm and the element aswell..

I have a crockpot here at home aswell that has a low and high setting, might check it out later..

[Bizier]

I think that is an awesome idea.

I don't want to hijack, but I was looking though some stuff and found a 1L thermos the other day... maybe I'll do AG in 50 tiny batches.

[Clean Brewer]

[Biernut]

Human ingenuity knows no bounds. If I live to be a thousand years old I will still be learning