I am agree, 34% Crystal, whether Dark or Medium, sounds unusually high.
I wouldn't conceive such a strange grist if it wasn't a real historical recipe from the archives. It's a Baltic Porter from the 1930s Poland.
The recipe requires 62% Pilsner, 34% Medium Crystal and 4% Black malts.
My previous 15% Dark Crystal recipe was a historical clone too (a Baltic Porter from Latvia from the same period).
Probably, a high Crystal percentage was an important feature of the style.
And, if you have half the medium, why aren't you using it?
Frankly, just to use up a bit my surplus of Dark Crystal and to save the Medium for the two next English batches.
But now, having thought this over, I think I'm better with just adding 17% Dark to 17% Medium. And no Carapils.
I was trying to preserve the original colour balance (14:20 ratio technically achieves that) but I somehow missed the simple point: the addition of 4% Black makes any colour-related concerns irrelevant.
quit worring about the color. It's a Baltic porter. It's going to be dark.
So thank you for pointing that out. I really have no idea why didn't I give a thought to this simple and obvious thing
Thank you gentlemen for your fast and brilliant inputs!