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Let's see here, I've been doing this hobby for over 25 years and I just recently had an ephiphany. I was reading that book by Gordon Strong and he was talking about adding dark grains during the sparge to reduce the astringent notes you sometimes get when making dark beers. I had always just mashed all the grains together and had never tried that technique. Anyhow, last week I made an Oatmeal Stout and employed his advice. Just transfered it to secondary last night and wow, is that stuff smooth. There is nothing earth shaking about adding the dark grains late and I know others in the club have done it but this was my "virgin run". All I gotta say is duhh........why the hell didn't I try this earlier? I am going to fool around with cold extraction next, I've made coffee that way and it works so it should work just as well for grain.

I tried a similar technique with a dry stout I did recently. Rather than adding the roasted grains at dough in, I added them at mash out so I could stir them in good and get a good bit of recirculation before sparging. The only problem was that the beer did not come out as dark as I would have liked, but that may have been a recipe problem more than technique. More experimentation to follow.

I heard another interesting mash technique on the Brewing Network Sunday Session.

It was about mashing rye. I think it would work for wheat also. The technique was to dough in with the barley first, normally. Mix in rice hulls to the top few inches of the mash. Then mix the rye or wheat on top of the rice hull layer. I think the idea is to keep the gummy stuff in the top layer and away from your screen at the bottom of your tun.

Sounds interesting.

Walter, you might try running the roasted barley through a blender and getting it almost to dust before adding it. That should increase the color extraction and hopefully avoid the astringent stuff you are trying to avoid.

Grinding the dark grains into dust was something else I had read recently and want to try.

you guys should have great success with that method. I like to think of how I brew tea and coffee. If I want espresso it is a super fine grain for maximum surface area, water well below boiling to keep the astringency down, and less than 3 minutes to keep it from getting too bitter. So my dark grains get turned to dust and go in just long enough to get the color I am looking for. I circulate my wort through my heat exchanger throw in the powder and once it is the color I want I switch the hose to the boil kettle and pump it straight to there. With the increase in surface area you will get to the proper SRM really fast! It has always been less than 5 mins for me.

Good luck!