Overestimation of Specialty Malts

The last few recipes I've done, I've used "Pro Mash" to check the amounts of the ingredients. I think maybe I might be doing something wrong with the amounts of ingredients, especially the specialty malts because my beers are turning out much more maltier and darker than I'm intending and the color is considerably darker than I'm expecting based on the estimation of color that I see in the Pro Mash software.

I made what I was intending to be a dark brown ale, and I used a pound of chocolate malt. The color ended up about what I expected from Pro Mash, but the taste of the beer is way more "roasty" than I intended.

Another beer that I made I used a pound of CaraAroma and the color was darker than I expected, and again the taste was overwhelmed by the amount of added flavor.

Are there any guidelines about how much is too much when you're adding specialty grains like Chocolate, Aroma, Crystal, etc... ?

Also, I was hoping to make a malty lager this week so I used 8# of Light Munich, .5# CaraAroma, and .5# CaraPils and it also turned out much darker than I anticipated.

How do you know how much is too much ?

A pound of Chocolate malt is quite a bit in a brown ale. I'd say no more than 1/2 pound would be better.

I don't have any experience with the rest of the malts you have listed there but you may want to cut back on them as well.

Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is an excellent source. There are chapters on each beer style and the typical percentages of malt used for each style based on place winning homebrews in competitions, as well as some commercial versions and historical versions.

A pound of chocolate is a LOT. I've found that looking at the ratios of various grains is much better than looking at the specific amounts.

Ray Daniel's section on determining your grain bill is indispensable for recipe creation imo.

iamjonsharp said:

Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is an excellent source. There are chapters on each beer style and the typical percentages of malt used for each style based on place winning homebrews in competitions, as well as some commercial versions and historical versions.

Click to expand...

+1.

Jamil's book and especially the podcasts, too. The latter have become indispensable to me for making recipes.

A pound of chocolate malt is a lot in any five gallon recipe, and ProMash won't ever tell you how roasty flavor and aroma will turn out in beer.

All the stuff the others mentioned are great resources, as are the books in the Classic Style Series. However, in the end, the way you know how much is too much (or just right) is from your own experience, not someone else's.


TL

I used a pound of chocolate (and a pound of roasted barley) in a foreign extra stout and got several comments that I was kind of high on the dark malts. I think a pound of chocolate should probably be reserved for stouts and porters. Brown ales usually have 1/4# to 1/2#.

To get an idea of how much specialty grains to use I try to find as many good recipes as I can find of the desired style and see what those recipes use. In addition to Jamil's recipes and several other good recipe books I also like to look at clone recipes and BYO. The clones are nice if you can find an example you are familiar with because then you have a taste reference.

Also be careful about the lovibond ratings of the grains. Often the grains you buy will be of a different rating than the defaults for your program. Chocolate malt and other dark grains are wildly varied in darkness.
Craig

And does Promash know it?

I haven't used Promash, but have had the experience of accidently setting Beersmith up as an extract recipe when I really partial mashing. So it assumed I was steeping the grains, and thus would recommend more grains to get the same flavor/color.

I realized the problem before I brewed and was able to correct it, bit if I hadn't it would have been a lot darker/maltier than I expected.

So if Promash has a selection for extract or mashing then be sure it is set correctly.

The point remains, though. Color does not equal maltiness or roastiness. There are specific formulas built into the software programs to estimate color, but there isn't a way that I'm aware of to quantify flavor characteristics. I mean, the ProMash/BeerSmith numbers will be the same regardless if you were using the same color of roasted barley or Carafe, even though there's a huge difference in the flavor they provide.