Caramel 10L 100%

I have just recieved a free bag of Briess caramel 10L and due to being flat broke I thought I would try making my 'goto' recipe that uses 100% 2 row with 100% Caramel instead.

Any thoughts?

OPKUTech said:

I have just recieved a free bag of Briess caramel 10L and due to being flat broke I thought I would try making my 'goto' recipe that uses 100% 2 row with 100% Caramel instead.

Any thoughts?

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That would be a great idea, if caramel was a base malt. Unfortunately, it has no diastastic power, and it won't work.

You could go up to about 15% max of caramel malt in a beer, but even that is pushing it. About a pound or so is the most you'll want in a 5 gallon batch.

You won't get much fermentable sugar from crystal malt.

Testing fermentability of crystal malt

1) When crystal malt is mashed on it's own, it's fermentability is about 50%
2) 2-row malt's fermentability is about 80%
3) When crystal is mashed with 2-row, the attenuation increased from about 50% to about 67%.

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AnOldUR said:

Testing fermentability of crystal malt

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Thank you for this thread-link! Had no idea that Crystal malt had any of it's own fermentable sugars! The only thing I didn't get for certain from Nilo's experiments is he mentioned that Crystal malt may not add much sweetness to the final product, yet the attenuation goes down when compared to simply using base malt alone. I would think there are unfermentable sugars present in that case and thus additional sweetness, which is what I've always been told and seem to have experienced. Is this conclusive?