AdIn
Well-Known Member
I remember there were some questions about using less-modified malt Briess sells, but nobody had any experience with it. So, I run across it on MoreBeer site and since it's significantly less expensive then German Pilsner malt I use I decided to give it a try and brew Munich Helles for obvious reasons. My usual schedule for a beer like this would be starting mash in at 100F do decoction to protein rest for 20 min. at 135F. Then infusion to sacharification and 30 min. rest at 147F. Infusion again to 162F followed by thin mashout decoction. Then I batch sparge. For a program like this and using BestMaltz Pilsner malt I get 82-85% efficiency. With this malt I got 72% efficiency :-( In fact I had to add 1lb of DME to hit target gravity. Other observations: malt and resulting wort is much lighter. Wort was really clear. Lots of protein slush afte lutering, not too much of cold/hot break. It's hard to assess resulting maltinnes, but from first impression it's not less then German malt. I think final conclusions will be made later, but from the first impressions this malt could be less expensive alternative for base malt if you are ready to spend more time doing step-mash with possible decoction and your LHBS carries it. I'll provide more feedback after fermentation completes.
