Caramel

[Fenix26]

hello brewers,

Here in New England the weather isn’t quite right for a fruity or summer beer.
Considering that I wanted to wait and for my next brew demonstrate how much of a sweet caramel flavor I can add to a pale or amber ale.

Any recommendations on how to get the sweetest caramel flavor into a beer?

*Also, mashing techniques - would a step mash help add sweet caramel flavor?

Thanks!!

 

[waldoar15]

With grain?

C 60 gives a good caramel flavor. Go higher into 80 and it starts to get a little burnt caramel /raisen taste to it.

Edit. That would work in an amber, not so much in a pale.

 

[cmac62]

Fenix, my basic understanding if you want a sweet caramel flavor you can do several different things. 1, mash warmer, in the high 150s, which will convert some of the sugars from the grain into unfermentable larger sugars. 2, add caramel malts, these have the unfermentables already in the grain due to the malting process used. 3, do a longer boil. I did a English BW for 2.5 hours, and my Scottish ales go at least 90 mins. The longer boil provides caramelizes the malt sugars in the kettle also providing the unfermentable sugars. 4, there is also the option of using honey malt, this will also add unfermentables to the wart, but not necessarily caramel flavors. Of course you can do all of the above. I like the sweet malty beers, but my EBW called for almost 10 oz of hops to counteract the huge amount of grain used. I hope this helps.