Weyermann Carafa III Dehusked

I'm considering adding Carafa III Dehusked to my Bitter recipe and possibly changing up the hops schedule a bit. Currently, the grist is composed of:

80% Marris Otter
7.5% Crystal 120
4.5% Munich Malt
3% Cara-Pils
5% Lyle's Golden Syrup (boil)

I thought about adding the same quantity of Carafa III Dehusked as the Crystal 120 (which happens to be 1 lb, which would put the OG into the low 1.040s and the SRM into the mid 20's). Any thoughts on what kind of flavors this will add? What style might it be if I change up the hop schedule a bit (EKG and Fuggles)? Brown Porter? The Bitter's hop schedule is:
18.8 IBUs EKG and 4.1 IBUs Fuggles at 60 min
6.3 IBUs EKG at 30 min
0.2 IBUs EKG at 1 min

Any thoughts on how to change the hops schedule and what style I'd be making? The Bitter tastes great and I don't want to ruin a good thing, but I thought a little change might be nice to see what it does.

You won't get a whole lot of flavor from the carafa speziel. It's mostly used for color and a touch of roastiness, but I don't know what you want to add it to a bitter. You might be encroaching on a less-toasty, less malty quasi-southern english brown, I guess, but I just can't see a good reason to add it to this style.

Weyermann categorizes it as a Chocolate Roasted malt on their website and several supplier websites state to use it in Stouts/Porters, so I guess I was trying to see if I would get a Brown Porter with it by adjusting my Bitter recipe a bit... maybe getting rid of the 30 min and 1 minute hop additions and make a 15 minute hop addition. But if you're saying it won't add much in the flavor department, maybe I shouldn't bother?

I think that the husked version supposedly has more flavor(probably quite bitter in large amounts). Maybe use a bit of that or some chocolate instead.

big supper said:

I think that the husked version supposedly has more flavor(probably quite bitter in large amounts). Maybe use a bit of that or some chocolate instead.

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Well, I just happen to have this on hand left over from a Bock I brewed a couple weeks ago. Getting anything more than what I have on hand isn't convenient for me right now since I'm brewing on Saturday and my LHBS is only open one day a week.

I just used a very small ammount (4oz) in my Mild for the 10der swap and it really adds a lot of color but not tons of flavor. The roasty flavor it added subdued and not bitter or harsh, but IMO adding almost a pound would probably take your color way past 20L. My grain bill was 7 lbs Maris Ottter (3.5L), 1lb Brown malt (65L) and 4oz CarafaIII (cant recall the Lovibond). The beer turned out to be as dark as maybe slightly more so than Hobgoblin.

GreenwoodRover said:

The roasty flavor it added subdued and not bitter or harsh, but IMO adding almost a pound would probably take your color way past 20L.

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That's sort of what I was looking for... a subdued roasty, hopefully slightly chocolatey flavor. This is a 12 gallon batch and Carafa III averages around 500 SRM, so IIRC when I plugged it into Beersmith last week the beer ended up about 25 SRM. I might just do it and change the hops schedule a bit. The Bitter recipe tastes awesome, so hopefully the worst that could happen is I get a darker, stronger variation of that.

I didn't see the 12 gallons, mine was only a 5 gal batch. Still I remember that it looked noticeably darker in the glass than Beersmith would have led me to believe. It was my first time using both brown malt and the carafaIII so I can't peg the color difference on exactly which one it was.