Preparing Malt & Grains for Brewing Barley Wine

"Hi, I'm Mark Emiley on behalf of Expert Village and it is finally time to start brewing. One of our first steps is going to be to add our liquid extract to hot water to help liquefy it further. Now we are going to start adding water to our kettle, we are going to add about a gallon right now. After we have added the water, we are going to turn on the heat and start aiming for a temperature of one-hundred and sixty-five degrees. Now we are going to add our grains to our steeping bag. We are either going to use a muslin sack and tie it off, or you can use one of the nylon steeping bags. Now that we have got our temperature where we want it, we are going to start steeping our grains. We are going to turn off the heat. Now we are going to add our grains into our steeping water. We are going to give it a nice push down to get it mixed up so we can get some nice color extraction. We want the temperature to stabilize in the one-fifties. When it is done this, you want to put the lid on and let it sit for a half an hour."