Weyermann Cara Red, anyone have experience?

Hey everyone,

So a bit ago I put up a thread about a Red Rye Saison I am going to be brewing. Well, right now I have 12.75lb grain bill (not counting 1lb of honey for either after fermentation or during the boil, can't decide), of which, 0.5lb is this Weyermann Cara Red. It is suppose to have good malt flavor and "a deep saturated red" color. What little data from Weyermann there is can be found here.

http://www.weyermann.de/eng/produkte.asp?idkat=18&umenue=yes&idmenue=37&sprache=2

So I want to know, has anyone ever used this? Is 0.5lb enough to produce a nice light-medium red color or will it be diluted too much? I of course also don't want this to become overpowered and look like liquid ruby either. According to Weyermann, it can make up close to 25% of your bill.

Hoping someone here has given this grain a shot and had some new about it. Thanks for your time!
Kyle

You will be fine. IME it did not really add a deep saturated red color to my beer. I guess you could call it red but to me it acts a lot like a medium crystal when adding as color. Turns out red-ish amber. I like the flavor a lot and have used it in PA's as 10% of the grist with success. The most I've used is 2lbs of it in the famous Waldo Lake Amber. Seems like it is a crap load but that was an awesome beer. It was more red in color than any of the other beers I've use it in.

As far as using .5lb for a red color, that might work in concert with other grains to turn it slightly red depending on what the color of your beer was before the carared is added. If you have a really light SRM, then .5lb may work to get a light red hue. When I want red, I add a small amount of roasted barley or black patent- which is probably a no no for this recipe. Good luck

have you ever used Melanoidin malt? it imparts a nice soft red tint and a full rich flavor.

v2comp said:

have you ever used Melanoidin malt? it imparts a nice soft red tint and a full rich flavor.

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No, not as of yet, I have it in part of a Belgian Strong Dark I have in plans, but haven't brewed as of yet.

I just figured when it used the word "saturated" I imagined it would going to just run wild...now that you say that, I am not too worried and maybe bump it up to 3/4 a lb.

@Kyle, did you ever make this ale using Cara Red? Just wondering. I went to my LHBS today and they were out of caramalt, which I was planning to use in an IPA, so I opted for .75# of Cara Red instead to blend with 11# 2 row.

I used carared on an IPA once, and it turned out similar to a medium crystal. Deep red color, as previously reported.

I use it in my imperial red recipe all the time. Not sure if it's this particular malt, but my red is pretty intensely-colored.

v2comp said:

have you ever used Melanoidin malt? it imparts a nice soft red tint and a full rich flavor.

Click to expand...

I think they are different a bit though. I've used melanoiden too, but when I did, I perceived it to simply be far more chock full of melanoidens than the carared. Both did have a pleasant malt/caramelized sugar type of flavor, just in different ways.

CaraRed will not make your beer any redder than Crystal 20 L; one of the lightest of crystal malts.

Using 25% of it will however give you a sweet and toasty mess of a Saison.

I was picking up some carared for a double IPA recipe today. Weyermann claims it is between 16-23L, but I compared it to crystal 20 and it looks waaaaaayyy darker. I would say it looks like it falls somewhere between a crystal 60 and crystal 80 (strictly from a visual perspective).

Has anyone else noticed this?

My favorite adjunct combo for "red" beers is a half pound each of carared, caramunich II and melanoidin (for 11 lb. batch). This results in about 17 SRM for me. If I really want to pump up the malt flavor I use 30-40% Munich for the base malt.

I actually did a red rye saison once using the above mentioned malt bill with Munich. I added a half pound of flaked rye. That beer had insane flavor.