accidentally used a specialty malt as my base

As the title reads, I accidentally used a caramel pale ale malt (carapale) as my base on my first full grain mash. Any ideas what this is going to do? A little more info, I was going for a centennial single hop iipa. I've been brewing small batches of single hop ales to get a feel for different hops and to figure out some of my favorites. Maybe I should read up more on malts and mashing.

Did you reach your original gravity? If you didn't have any other grains with sufficient diastatic power to convert all the grains you will probably have issues.

So, if I'm understanding correctly, you used several pounds of something like C40? Is that right? What's the grain bill? What OG did you get?

Without further info, I'd guess that it will be extremely sweet and caramelly (probably undrinkably so) with perhaps some unconverted starches and maybe a tiny amount of alcohol, depending on the grain bill.

The first thing that comes to mind is that you could use the wort as an addition to glasses of apple juice to make a caramel-apple drink if it's the case that it's cloyingly, disgustingly sweet and you want to avoid dumping it, but the hops might prevent that. On the other hand, the sweetness would probably overpower all but the highest amounts of bitterness, and you could boil it for half an hour to an hour to drive off the hop flavor an aroma for the sweet drink. I don't know that mixing it with apple juice and making it into a hard cider would be feasible, since it would probably need to make a *lot* of cider to get the proportions right.

The grain bill and other parameters would be helpful in suggesting a course of action, but there might not be much to do besides wait it out and see.

dump it and don't do this same thing again.

If it is sweet you could try dumping 1/2-1 tsp of amylase enzyme in as a last ditch effort before throwing it out. It may convert enough of the larger sugars to make it drinkable, but for future brews, section 3 of Palmer's How to Brew would be worth a read.

http://www.vikingmalt.com/?id=183

Its really a caramel or crystal malt. It has negligible enzymatic activity. Eastoak is right, dump and try again. Sorry for the bad news.

My advice, for what its worth, is to keep the recipe and beer fairly simple when trying something new, like your first all-grain batch. Average gravity, straightforward grain bill and recipe. Cut down the variables when you're trying something new. Take a look at the recipe database here for a nice basic American Pale Ale, for example - Yooper, EdWort and Biermuncher all have good recipes for those and if you used one of those, you wouldn't have to worry about whether the recipe is good. I have a nice, basic Pale Ale recipe that recently won a first at a competition, this particular version featured Nelson Sauvin hops, but you could substitute Cascade or Centennial. Its in the recipe database, too, and at http://www.singingboysbrewing.com/Nelson-Sauvin-Pale-Ale.html

zzARzz said:

If it is sweet you could try dumping 1/2-1 tsp of amylase enzyme in as a last ditch effort before throwing it out. It may convert enough of the larger sugars to make it drinkable, but for future brews, section 3 of Palmer's How to Brew would be worth a read.

Click to expand...

^^^ good advice, you could also try pitching a bunch of Brett

Unfortunately, my fermentation containers are a bit too shallow in depth at this point to use my gravity meter. Pretty soon I'll be increasing my batch size so my OG meter will be useful. Until then it's just me hoping beersmith is correct. Anyway, here's what the company that produces said malt says about it:

"MALT CHARACTER

Cara Pale is produced from green malt in a roasting drum. Despite the low colour value, Cara Pale is a true caramel malt, i.e. the starch has been gelatinised and saccharified within the kernel. Cara Pale is sweet and caramel-like. The enzymatic activity of Cara Pale is negligible.

APPLICATIONS

Cara Pale is used to produce a full-bodied beer with a clean, round flavour. Due to its low colour value it is suitable also for light coloured beers.

BREWING CHARACTERISTICS

moisture % max 7.5
extract fine % dm min 77.0
colour °EBC 6 - 10

STORAGE

Cara pale should be stored in a cool (< 20 °C), dry (< 40 RH %) place. Under these conditions the shelf-life is minimum one year."

I used 80% of Carapale, 10% table sugar and 10% muscovado sugar. The sugars were used to increase the alcohol percentage from about 5.5 to 8. So according to Beersmith, I was going to be getting an alcohol% of around 5.5 with it. According to the manufacturer, which also provided a malt file to import into beersmith, the protein % is 11.7. I'm just noticing now, it does say that the "max in batch" is 20%.

Well, it seems like my experiment is likely to get thrown out so, good thing it was only a small batch(5 liters or 1.3 gallons). I'll let it go and see how it turns out. As of now, I have some other fermentation containers that I can use to make some legitimate beers but maybe some reading is in store for me. Thanks for the help guys!

Pull a sample with a turkey Baster sanitized if course. Then use the tube the hydrometer came in for testing. That's how I test my batches.

If it's only 5 litres you're not really out much.

Since it's going to retain a lot of sweetness and not really ferment couldn't you maybe use it as an addition for boosting body in future 5 gallon brews?

Maybe boil it up some, to further caramelize it, then use it in a Wee Heavy or something like that.