2-Row vs Maris Otter vs Golden Promise vs Halcyon vs Pearl vs Optic

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Nice study, thank you!

I have tried MO, GP, and Optic and agree with many of your impressions. I know a lot of people use MO in virtually all of their beers, but I can't get past its "nutty" character in hoppy beers. I think MO works great in English styles, stouts, etc., or when mixed with another, more neutral malt like American 2-row/pale ale.

Agree that GP is a very sweet malt. I used it in a N. English brown ale, American stout, Wee Heavy, and RIS. The sweetness is very evident. So evident that some have mistaken my American-style stout for a sweet stout (with 70+ IBU's and a pound of roasted barley!). The Wee Heavy is also a bit too sweet even though it fits all the BJCP style parameters. Optic I found to be pretty neutral.
 
Great write up, thanks for taking the time to do this.

Many of the recipes I find use 2 row as the base malt, which is fine if you have access to us 2-row. Here, in the uk, we don't. All the uk forums suggest optic as a substitute in American recipes. What's your feeling on this advice, I'm keen to try and clone SN torpedo but all the recipes start off with good ol' US 2-row.
 
Great write up, thanks for taking the time to do this.

Many of the recipes I find use 2 row as the base malt, which is fine if you have access to us 2-row. Here, in the uk, we don't. All the uk forums suggest optic as a substitute in American recipes. What's your feeling on this advice, I'm keen to try and clone SN torpedo but all the recipes start off with good ol' US 2-row.


Optic was a bit rougher than 2-row. More grainy, but still very neutral compared to the other malts. For a beer as hop-centric as SN Torpedo, I think you'd be fine to use it as a sub for American 2-row.
 
Thanks for all the positive support and feedback on this experiment! It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I was able to broaden my appreciation for different base malts. Based on all of your suggestions to submit this as an article I went ahead and did just that.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/entries/English-Base-malt-comparison.html

Pretty much my posts from this thread with some more looking into the different barley varieties.

This website (http://barley.agricrops.org/menu.php?) was a great resource for barley varieties and where they came from.

Like, who knew there were Maris Dingo, Maris Puma or Maris Mink barley varieties?
 
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