What You Need
You don’t need much. You probably have everything you need already, except perhaps for an inexpensive grain bag.

• Grain Bags: Get yourself either a few disposable muslin bags or some reusable grain bags.
• Thermometer: You’ll also need a thermometer if you don’t have one. If you’re making beer, you should already have one.
• Crushed Grains: The grains must be crushed. You can almost always find them pre-crushed at your homebrew shop. If they’re not crushed, you can use a rolling pin and crush the grains in the bag–not to a powder, just crack them up.
• Water: You’ll need brewing-suitable water to steep your grains in. The ideal ratio here is to use less than 1 gallon of water per pound of specialty grain to prevent extracting astringent tannins (I use a ratio of 3 quarts of water per pound of grain).

The Process
Steeping specialty grains is easy! If you read through this twice and try it once, you’re an expert!

• Bring your water to anywhere between 150 and 170 degrees F. 160 is the sweet spot right in the middle.
• Put the crushed grains in your bag(s) and tie them off.
• Put your grain bags into the water and let them steep for 30 minutes.
• While the grains are steeping, swirl them around about every 5-10 minutes.
• After 30 minutes have passed, take the grain bag out and let it drip for a minute (then discard the grains).
• Crank the temperature up on your brew kettle and proceed with your normal extract-style brewing!

Extract Kits with Specialty Grains
Many of the kits from homebrew shops have specialty grains crushed and ready to go for you. You can find them at places like Northern Brewer, MoreBeer, or your local homebrew shop.

Grains That Can Be Steeped
Here are many of the grains that you can steep to provide more complex and delicious flavors in your beer.

• Cara-Pils/Dextrine
• Biscuit Malt
• Black (Patent) Malt
• Black Barley (Stout)
• Caraamber
• Carafoam
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 10L
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 20L
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 30L
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 40L
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L
• Caramel/Crystal Malt – 80L
• Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L
• Caramunich Malt
• Carared
• Caravienne Malt
• Chocolate Malt
• Roasted Barley

I took this list from the BeerSmith site (I use BeerSmith as my primary tool for formulating recipes as well). It has descriptions of each of the grains listed as well as considerably more information about them: http://www.beersmith.com/GrainList.htm

Any grain listed on that site that has a “No” under the “Must Mash” column can be steeped. Yeah, you can do a lot of experimentation to find the perfect beer without spending the additional effort of partial mash or all-grain brewing.

Summary
Steeping specialty grains before brewing your extract-based beer is quick and easy. It only takes an additional 30 minutes, of which you have to concern yourself with 5-10. And, you’ll be brewing much better, fresher-tasting beer that you’ve crafted yourself and can call your own. Cheers!

All that said, I really want to try it. At some point, I’ll try something like Roasted Barley or Black Patent in a cold-steep for 24 hours, then will combine it with a simple Light DME in a small batch to see what it yields. Until then, I’m hoping to find someone with experience cold-steeping specialty grains to see their results.

Links to other discussions or articles on cold-steeping are more than welcome.