Brew Classic European Beers At Home - Crystal malt?

[Rubes]

I just picked up this book after searching for it for a long time. A lot of the recipes use Crystal malt, but none say what colour to use, and all the colour measurements are in EBC anyway. The beginning of the book says that 150 EBC is 'standard', so should I get as close to Crystal 75 as I can get and use that? Or put the amount of Crystal for the recipe into Beersmith and change the colour into the recipe is at the EBC I want? Sorry if I made it more confusing than it is.

Can anyone who has brewed recipes from this book shed any light?

Thanks

 

[beerandcoding]

I believe the crystal malt reference in that book is 'British Crystal 70-80L'. If you are trying to brew the recipes as written, I would try to find this malt. It shouldn't be too hard, Baird, TF, Simpsons and Crisp all make it.

If you are stuck with domestic malts, crystal 60L or crystal 80L are your best bet. In either case, I would also stick with the amounts given in the recipe and deal with the EBC being slightly off. Increasing/decreasing the ratios to match color will throw off the flavor much more than using a slightly different crystal malt.

Hope that answers your question.

Cheers!
Kevin

 

[MrAverage]

Kevin offers good advice. Just wanted to add the following:

To convert EBC to SRM: Multiple EBC by .375 and add .46. (SRM = Lovibond....the difference is that in the US, Lovibond is commonly used to describe the color of malts whereas SRM is used to describe the color of finished beer. They both use the same scale however so they are equivalent)

 

[Rubes]

Awesome, thanks guys. That's what I will do.

 

[zgoda]

In UK they have some standard naming convention, "caramalt" is ~10L, "crystal" 70-80L and "dark crystal" is ~120L or bit higher. I see this often on British forums.