There's no such thing as cloying

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kanzimonson

kanzimonson

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Just wanted to get your attention.

But seriously, "cloying" is the most overused word in homebrewing. I think crystal-malt haters throw this word around so much when it comes to giving advice on recipes. For example, check out this recipe:

9.37# Maris Otter
1.1# crystal 75
.55# crystal 120
20g roast barley

I guarantee if I posted this for critique someone would try and convince me it will turn out too sweet. Guess what, it's the recipe for Stone Levitation - one of the driest amber ales I've had.

Or how about:

14# two row
1.05# Munich
1.4# crystal 45
1.05# carastan

Having a heart attack yet? Oskar Blues Gordon Ale.

It's very rare where I've had a beer I thought was too sweet. Oskar Blues Old Chub is about the sweetest I can think of, and I still will drink it.

As far as I can tell, a beer that you expect to finish with a lot of residual sweetness can always be balanced with more hops, high alcohol, or both (like World Wide Stout). The only beers that truly deserve the description of cloying is something that doesn't attenuate fully.

Discuss.
 
I agree. But the key is "adding enough hops" to balance the malt. Old Chub is supposed to be sweet- that's the point. But an IPA is not. I wouldn't use two pounds of crystal in an IPA, even with extra hopping, as a rule- but there have been exceptions of course.

I have seen some recipes posted on here that I've called cloying. And some I've called God-awful sweet.

Balance is always the key.
 
kanzimonson said:
It's very rare where I've had a beer I thought was too sweet. Oskar Blues Old Chub is about the sweetest I can think of, and I still will drink it.
Click to expand...

So...you like sweet beers. Good on ya, but I'm not sure what the punchline is here. No disrespect intended with that, but it doesn't prove that other people who don't like sweet beers are any more right or wrong than you are in stating their preferences. Of course anything can be balanced, but it doesn't mean that everything is.
 
kanzimonson said:
Just wanted to get your attention.

But seriously, "cloying" is the most overused word in homebrewing. I think crystal-malt haters throw this word around so much when it comes to giving advice on recipes. For example, check out this recipe:

9.37# Maris Otter
1.1# crystal 75
.55# crystal 120
20g roast barley

I guarantee if I posted this for critique someone would try and convince me it will turn out too sweet. Guess what, it's the recipe for Stone Levitation - one of the driest amber ales I've had.

Or how about:

14# two row
1.05# Munich
1.4# crystal 45
1.05# carastan

Having a heart attack yet? Oskar Blues Gordon Ale.

It's very rare where I've had a beer I thought was too sweet. Oskar Blues Old Chub is about the sweetest I can think of, and I still will drink it.

As far as I can tell, a beer that you expect to finish with a lot of residual sweetness can always be balanced with more hops, high alcohol, or both (like World Wide Stout). The only beers that truly deserve the description of cloying is something that doesn't attenuate fully.

Discuss.
Click to expand...

So are you with the Crystal Malt Lobby? What's the problem here? Make and drink what you like. If you like a lot of crystal malt who cares? Those recipes are not what I would necessarily call excessive, with roughly 10-15% crystal content, although is most instances 5-10% is plenty. Personally I keep it in the 5% range when using crystal but have made beer with as high as 15%. The big problem are the homebrew recipes that throw in lots of crystal just because the brewer thinks it's mandatory or the not uncommon recipes you see with 20, 30, or 40% crystal. It's the overuse of crystal combined with poorly fermented beers that makes most bad homebrew bad. :mug:
 
It's true that I do enjoy a sweeter beer, though I also love a bitter beer. And I do brew the beers I love.

I guess one of the things I'm pointing out is how restricted we are by style guidelines. When people on HBT blast a post with the cloying comment, they usually don't specify "for that style." They just say it's too sweet. Are these people then going over to Dubbel recipes and saying the BU:GU is way too low? Nope.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of styles that overlap where we can talk about this: if I posted X recipe as Y style it will be called sweet but for Z style it will be just fine. And obviously I'm not talking about posting a bock as an IPA - more like amber ales and APAs. There's definitely some overlap with those two.
 
kanzimonson said:
It's true that I do enjoy a sweeter beer, though I also love a bitter beer. And I do brew the beers I love.

I guess one of the things I'm pointing out is how restricted we are by style guidelines. When people on HBT blast a post with the cloying comment, they usually don't specify "for that style." They just say it's too sweet. Are these people then going over to Dubbel recipes and saying the BU:GU is way too low? Nope.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of styles that overlap where we can talk about this: if I posted X recipe as Y style it will be called sweet but for Z style it will be just fine. And obviously I'm not talking about posting a bock as an IPA - more like amber ales and APAs. There's definitely some overlap with those two.
Click to expand...

Sure. And we all have different tastes. I can't stand sweet APAs. I don't have a sweet tooth at all, and don't ever eat dessert or sweet things. It's rare that I'll sit and enjoy a wee heavy.

I do like ambers, as long as they aren't "too sweet". "Too sweet" to me is defined by being unbalanced with a very heavy caramel taste that comes from too much crystal malt and not enough bittering hops. I consider a carmelly amber "cloying".
 
It's hard to call any recipe potentially cloyingly sweet without knowing the hop and mash schedule first. I'd even say the yeast strain matters as well. I'd go out on a limb though and say that most newer brewers that rush into creating that masterpiece recipe from scratch make the mistake of using 30% cara malts and that is usually a disaster without knowing what you're doing.
 
kanzimonson said:
Just wanted to get your attention.

But seriously, "cloying" is the most overused word in homebrewing. I think crystal-malt haters throw this word around so much when it comes to giving advice on recipes.
Click to expand...

I dunno, the beer I most often hear described as "cloying" is Dogfish Head 120, and it has no crystal malt at all. It's more about not having the hops to balance your malt selection out than any particular malt selection.
 
John Maier of Rogue on Brewing Network Radio talked about Santa's
Private Reserve 60% base malt, 40% crystal(including 10% munich).
It tastes sweet to me, but very well balanced.

1.053 OG
65 IBU's

Here's a clone Recipe from Zymurgy with help from Rogue.
It's for St.Rogue Red which is the same as Santa's Private Reserve,
just a different hopping schedule.

60% 6.0 lbs Great Western 2-row pale malt
10% 1.0 lb Hugh Baird Munich Malt
10% 1.0 lb Hugh Baird 15 Carastan malt
10% 1.0 lb Hugh Baird 40 Carastan malt
10% 1.0 lb Hugh Baird 75 crystal malt

Got a batch of this in the fermenter now, just starting the cold crash,
can't wait to try it, I hate waiting for Christmas to see Santa :mug:

Bob
 
kanzimonson said:
I guess one of the things I'm pointing out is how restricted we are by style guidelines.
Click to expand...

Restricted how? There is a fair bit of talk around these parts about the problems brought on by BJCP style guidelines, but never much by the way of specifics. At least, I've never felt restricted by them personally, and none of my unstyled beers to this point have been seized by the reinheitsgebotstapo.

If you post a recipe that is sweeter than average to a diverse bunch of beer drinkers, it is natural (perhaps even definitional?) that the majority of them will say it is too sweet. In that situation, it's not that the style guidelines are too rigid, it's just that they reflect the "average" sensibility. If you know what you like and can effectively design your own beers in response to style guidelines, it sounds to me like they have served exactly their purpose.
 
I think the term "cloying" might come from a combination of things. If you're beer is under-hopped, it will taste sweet. Likewise, if you're carbination is too low, the beer comes across sweeter. And of course poor yeast attenuation will leave the beer limp and sweet.
 
And maybe I have the wrong understanding of what cloying means. To me, it implies any food or drink that is too sweet to consume any more of. Like chugging maple syrup.

But I guess a lot of people use cloying specifically to mean sweet. Maybe it's because even sweet is so subjective by person. Yooper would probably not like my APAs, and they clock in at 7% crystal, but I also use 1968 in most of my ales.

I just think that too often we rush into calling someone's recipe "sweet." And then there are sweet beers out there that the same people revere. Like Bell's Two Hearted. I'd say it's pretty sweet for an IPA but again it has a nice bitterness to back it. Still, much sweeter and caramelly than your typical IPA. Yoop, do you like this one out of curiosity?
 
kanzimonson said:
And maybe I have the wrong understanding of what cloying means. To me, it implies any food or drink that is too sweet to consume any more of. Like chugging maple syrup.

But I guess a lot of people use cloying specifically to mean sweet. Maybe it's because even sweet is so subjective by person. Yooper would probably not like my APAs, and they clock in at 7% crystal, but I also use 1968 in most of my ales.

I just think that too often we rush into calling someone's recipe "sweet." And then there are sweet beers out there that the same people revere. Like Bell's Two Hearted. I'd say it's pretty sweet for an IPA but again it has a nice bitterness to back it. Still, much sweeter and caramelly than your typical IPA. Yoop, do you like this one out of curiosity?
Click to expand...

LOVE Two Hearted!

When I say something is "sweet", I guess generally I mean out of balance and hence too sweet.

Like I said, I like Old Chub. I like an occasional barley wine or wee heavy. I like Scottish ales. Those are considered on the sweet side. But not out of balance or out of style for what they are.

An IPA should not be sweet. Two Hearted in my opinion is not sweet. It's hoppy with a firm bitterness, and well balanced with malt.

There is a brewpub near me that makes sweet, underattenuated beers of all styles. Every single one is underhopped and too sweet. The blonde, the black widow (a black blonde?), the Scottish, etc. Out of those beers, the best is the Scottish. Probably because a Scottish IS supposed to lean towards the sweet. They have a brown ale that is cloying, though! I mean, stick to your tongue and teeth sweet. Underhopped, underattenuated, and very sweet. I hear that "chicks love it". This chick does not.
 
My wife has a sweet tooth like no other. Whenever I say something is too sweet she just laughs and says "that's like saying something is too awesome. It's just not possible".

I have always understood "cloying" to mean too sweet for the style usually because the bitterness from the hops is unbalanced. at least that is how i would use it with the beers i have made that didnt come out quite right.
 

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