What does the 'L' stand for?

Sorry if this has already been covered...didn't really know what to search for. When you buy grains to make your grain tea, you can get 60 L or 120 L, etc crystal malt...what unit is the L?

I've brewed a fair amount, but just realized I didn't know what that actually signifies.

Lovibond. It is a color scale. Higher = darker, lower = lighter.

It also affects other things. Crystal 20 won't be as burnt and raisiny tasting as crystal 120 would be. This can' directly affect the flavor (as well as color) of your finished beer.

This is actually a pretty good question.

L stands for Lovibond, a measurement of color for various items.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wrucksterpage/color.htm

Huh. Makes sense. I was sorta surprised not to see it in the Wiki section on the different caramel levels.

It does seem like a fairly inexact measurement scale...less specific than a measurement like using the alpha acid % to calculate bitterness (HBU I believe?). I can't really think of a better way to measure it though.

Another question...

What does the little degree symbol mean when they put down the measurements like that? For example, I see the same grain types with 8L and the circle after the L and some have 10L with the little circle after the L. I think it may mean degrees, but not sure.

MikeInCtown said:

Another question...

What does the little degree symbol mean when they put down the measurements like that? For example, I see the same grain types with 8L and the circle after the L and some have 10L with the little circle after the L. I think it may mean degrees, but not sure.

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I'm pretty sure that if the degree symbol is not present, it's implied.

I don't actually know why it's in degrees, but that's just the unit that they measure the color in I believe.

MikeInCtown said:

Another question...

What does the little degree symbol mean when they put down the measurements like that? For example, I see the same grain types with 8L and the circle after the L and some have 10L with the little circle after the L. I think it may mean degrees, but not sure.

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Yes.

The system actually measures the beer, which even for a dark stout only run to ~70L. The high number on grains are what they would produce if used exclusively.

The SRM (standard reference method) number is defined as 10 times the absorbance of a sample at 430 nanometers measured through a .5-inch cell. The 430-nanometer wavelength corresponds to a deep blue light, and is the wavelength at which beers appear most different from each other.

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SRM ~ degrees Lovibond

Also, this measurement is per pound to gallon. So the assumption is, that you add say one pound of 60 °L Crystal malt in 1 gallon of water the color would be 60 °L. In a standard 5 gallon batch it would be 12 °L for the one pound.

zoebisch01 said:

Also, this measurement is per pound to gallon. So the assumption is, that you add say one pound of 60 °L Crystal malt in 1 gallon of water the color would be 60 °L. In a standard 5 gallon batch it would be 12 °L for the one pound.

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Good info. I never thought about how that worked!

Thanks z!!!!!

Dude said:

Good info. I never thought about how that worked!

Thanks z!!!!!

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welcome.

The only thing to take care is though, is the scale is unfortunately non linear (iirc) so the idea kind of falls apart when it gets past the dark brown ales. But for most stuff it works great. At least this is the understanding I have from the things I read. They say that some of the brew software has much more complicated approach to getting the correct value.


To clarify what I mean is that there is a saturation in color that we can percieve where the onset of this happens very quickly after say the color of a nut brown. So even though you get those high rated lovibond values you can still be using quite different amounts of dark grains and still get a beer that looks black. So even though the scale goes from 1 to like 550, the reality is that we only ever use a fraction of that scale. So in a sense it is non linear. How black is black though . I am sure many of you have encountered this. Actually I love playing with tiny amounts of highly colored grain to see what happens to the color.

zoebisch01 said:

Also, this measurement is per pound to gallon. So the assumption is, that you add say one pound of 60 °L Crystal malt in 1 gallon of water the color would be 60 °L. In a standard 5 gallon batch it would be 12 °L for the one pound.

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So this work by taking an average of all grains used? Say you have 1/2 lb 20L and 1/2 lb 60L ... that would be the same color as 1lb of 40L in one gallon of water?

Ó Flannagáin said:

So this work by taking an average of all grains used? Say you have 1/2 lb 20L and 1/2 lb 60L ... that would be the same color as 1lb of 40L in one gallon of water?

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As someone else mentioned, the lb/gal calculation starts to fall apart as beers get darker. For your specific example, though the answer (if ProMash is to be believed) is yes. Both come up at 18.7 SRM, which is close to the 20 you'd expect.

Double the grains, though, and ProMash gives you 30.1 SRM where you'd expect 40.

Ó Flannagáin said:

So this work by taking an average of all grains used? Say you have 1/2 lb 20L and 1/2 lb 60L ... that would be the same color as 1lb of 40L in one gallon of water?

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Yes this should work. I did this exact same thing when I went I converted my very first DME batch to AG. I had some Muntons DME that was labeled 'Amber'. Well after tons of research (their site doesn't even have much info, and they never answered my email) I found that the Lovibond rating was app. 30 °L. So I had to back calculate what to use because I only had Crystal 10 and Crystal 40. I can't remember the exact details of it (I have the recipe tucked away somewhere) but I came up with a very close approximation to the orginal APA recipe. Both in color and flavor. I have a theory on the Crystals in that you can use combinations of them to achieve very similar results in both color and flavor.

In the end the AG recipe came out a shade darker, but the reason for this was because the base malt I had been using was incorrectly ordered by my LHBS. I had asked for Pale Malt and instead got the Pale Ale Malt from Briess, which has a slightly higher Lovibond rating. I am certain this was the discrepancy. But in my spreadsheet I had been using the Pale Malt Lovibond rating.

Sounds like an interesting experience. I would imagine though the higher in L you get the more the flavor is skewed even when calculating the correct amount to come somewhere in the mid range when using a low and high L crystal.

ie. - .5# of 60L + .5# 120 = 90 L but the flavor might be more raiseny due to the darker 120 L, no?

- WW

Tons of great info in here! I'm surprised we missed it on the wiki. I want to add an article but.... I just can't bring myself to do it.

Willie3 said:

Sounds like an interesting experience. I would imagine though the higher in L you get the more the flavor is skewed even when calculating the correct amount to come somewhere in the mid range when using a low and high L crystal.

ie. - .5# of 60L + .5# 120 = 90 L but the flavor might be more raiseny due to the darker 120 L, no?

- WW

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Right, that's where you have to be careful. And some malts impact this way more than others. Dingeman's Special B comes to mind . But on low level amounts, they tend to have more of an effect on color than you do on flavor. Think about how you can use tiny amounts of say chocolate malt to impart color. But you don't seem to get nearly as much a change in flavor. At least this seems to be how I percieve it anyway .

Ray Daniels discusses this a bit in Designing Great Beers. He talks about the color system and how different beers are scaled. He even has a process to determine color by using commercial examples and mixing them. The non-linear thing is evident in there becuase he talks about how diluting dark beer won't come to the same ºL as the lighter beer.