Darken or "run whatcha brung"

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Skagdog

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I've got 13 lbs of "Premium" 2-row.
6 oz. of Cascade Hops
1 pouch of Wyeast American Ale
It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.....hit it!


Okay, on a serious note, I'm planning a SMaSH for Wednesday with this:

12.5 lbs of 2 row
1 oz at 45, 30, 10 and 5

I'll Mash at 150 for 75 minutes (according to Beersmith)

My only question is do you get good color out of using only 2-row?
If it's too pale, what sort of options do I have and when should they be utilized (pre-, through-, or post-boil)?

Should I just let it ride?

FYI-this is my second all-grain batch and I will probably repeat this batch until I'm more efficient with the entire process....
 
not sure what you mean by too pale, but using all 2-row will produce a very pale beer.
 
The two points of pale malt is to use less heat in the drying process to maintain the greatest enzyme quality and to give the lightest coloring to the beer with a fully modified malt. If you want the beer to be darker and still a SMASH, you would go with a malt that is kilned at a higher temperature to get the color without destroying the enzymes, something like a Munich malt. You would want to research to find what exact malt gives you the color with full conversion as my example of Munich may not be the correct one.
 
Isn't there something called sinamar or similar that's used to darken beer? If it were me, I'd just let it be pale - I'm more into flavor. It sounds pretty tasty, but why not throw the other 1/2 pound of malt in?
 
If you want to darken a little bit, and still use only what you have on-hand, you can try toasting a pound or more of your malt.

Also, you can increase your boil time to 90 or 120 minutes for more kettle carmelization. Just be sure to add extra water to your boil calculations, so you are left collecting the same amount for your fermenter at the end.

Additionally, a 150-F mash temp is fairly light bodied, and fine if that is your desire. If you wanted something with a little bit more body, raising the mash temp to 154-F would work well.

Good luck & have a great brewday!
--LexusChris
 
I am just gonna SMaSH it all as-is and see where it takes me.

I am gonna use snow water for the brew. Did any of you see the duck pond water beer?
 
As mentioned, you can toast a portion of the malt to get some interesting nutty stuff going on.

A decoction mash won't change the color all that much, but some say it lends an ineffable richness. I do decoctions for almost every lager and hefeweizen I brew.

Kettle caramelization, by aggressively reducing (boiling off) a portion of the first runnings, is used to achieve the faintly smoky notes in Scottish ales.

Brewing the beer with the malt as it arrived to you, though, is useful as a benchmark to let you know what that ingredient does for you.
 
I am just gonna SMaSH it all as-is and see where it takes me.

I am gonna use snow water for the brew. Did any of you see the duck pond water beer?

Snow water (melted snow?) may not contain the minerals that the yeast need for a good ferment and may not have the flavor you want as it is similar to distilled or RO water. It will pick up some chemicals from the air as it form snowflakes but these may not be ones you would want in your beer.
 
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