Caramel flavor in a beer

[Shizog4]

Hey guys and gals,

I am trying my first caramel cream ale and have put together a first recipe. It's going to be partial mash. I really want to get a nice caramel taste. The goal is to have a similar caramel profile to due south caramel cream ale. Here's the grains I have:

5# 2-row
1#8oz 60L
8oz carabohemian for flavor and aroma

I also read about caramelizing some LME.

Any ideas?

 

[m00ps]

Well any "cara" malts will get you some caramel flavors. But be careful, tis easy to go overboard with them. I stay below 20% specialty malts in every recipe I do. Usually below 10% though. I wouldn;t recommend doing over 10% something as noticeable as caramel malts.

For more caramel malts, you could do a longer boil (120min?). This will create more maillard products and give you a darker wort. Although you will need to account for the addition evaporation by adding some water. They do this with like big english and scotch ales.

Or, what I like to do, I save 1gal of my first runnings (from BIAB) and I boil that separately in a pot while the real boil is going on. I reduce this 1gal to a near syrup (accidently burned it once but it was great) and add it back in near the end. This works very well and basically turns some of your wort into actual caramel

 

[Shizog4]

Yea I was thinking of basically caramelizing some of it and adding back after later

 

[Subdivisions]

Check out this recipe thread:

Caramel Amber ale

He uses Amber Candi syrup to get his caramel flavor. There is a link to a thread on how it's made. You probably won't need or want as much for a cream ale.

 

[Qhrumphf]

You could try using a Candi syrup for sure, you could also try making an English invert syrup (I'd probably go #2 or #3 invert). Instructions can be found on the internet.

Like others have said, increase crystal malts (particularly in the midrange) will provide crystal flavors. 2 lbs of crystal malt is certainly a lot, I'd made sure that you get the fermentability high by mashing low, and might need to increase the bitterness, or that could easily go overboard.

I would recommend cutting the crystal malt in half, pick one and go with it, although I would consider instead going with an English or American crystal than a German crystal, as I think the character may be more appropriate for what you're going.

And then, like said, you can either do a long boil (the traditional method for getting the rich caramel malt in Scottish Ales, I usually go about 3 hours), or the quick fix which is taking a gallon of first runnings and boiling them down thick.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Duplicate post (lag)

 

[Shizog4]

Thanks for the input ... It's a partial mash recipe I also have Amber LME to add to it so hopefully I don't get too much crystal flavoring

 

[cederbusch]

Well any "cara" malts will get you some caramel flavors. But be careful, tis easy to go overboard with them. I stay below 20% specialty malts in every recipe I do. Usually below 10% though. I wouldn;t recommend doing over 10% something as noticeable as caramel malts.

For more caramel malts, you could do a longer boil (120min?). This will create more maillard products and give you a darker wort. Although you will need to account for the addition evaporation by adding some water. They do this with like big english and scotch ales.

Or, what I like to do, I save 1gal of my first runnings (from BIAB) and I boil that separately in a pot while the real boil is going on. I reduce this 1gal to a near syrup (accidently burned it once but it was great) and add it back in near the end. This works very well and basically turns some of your wort into actual caramel

Old thread but relevant to me.

If you do a separate boil of the first wort, you just add water to get calculated post boil volume?

 

[EdawgTheMighty]

Yes

 

[VikeMan]

If you do a separate boil of the first wort, you just add water to get calculated post boil volume?

You could do that (i.e. add water to the kettle), or you could increase the sparge water volume. The latter would increase mash efficiency.

 

[EdawgTheMighty]

Actually that's good to know. I was going to do this today an I will just increase the sparge water. It seems so obvious.

 

[tellyho]

Amber Candi syrup or boil down the first gallon.