Crystal Malt

[KarmaCitra]

I think I've come to the realization that I don't like ANY crystal in my pales and IPAs. I feel like the added sweetness, even at 2% of the grist, clashes with hops for some reason. Anyone have similar experiences with crystal malt?

 

[kevin58]

Interesting. I was just reading a blog post by Ron Pattinson about Malt in WW I and one passage caught my eye...

Most beers were brewed from a pale malt base with no coloured malts at all. The only exceptions to this were Porter and Stout, which could contain brown, black and Amber malt, and Mild Ale, which often contained crystal malt. The use of crystal malt in Pale Ales was pretty much unknown before WW I.

For the full context of that paragraph read Ron's post: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2019/08/malt-in-ww-i.html

 

[bracconiere]

i mean this seriously...if you like a lighter flavor, you could try using rice too....

 

[Jag75]

I use crystal 10 , maybe half a pound in my IPA.

 

[singybrue]

Thus the beauty of Homebrewing, you can make what YOU like!

 

[Dgallo]

I do enjoy honey malt and Caramunich from time to time at 2/3%. I don’t think it clashes but needs to be used in the right circumstances and at the right level of ibus.

 

[shoengine]

I'm not afraid to use crystal in anything if it fits my tastes and what I want to make. The converse being true that I only use it in stuff that I want to taste it in or get the color I want.

That being said, now I need to make a IIPA with some crystal in it...

 

[gwinn758]

Depends what I'm looking for in the beer, I have switched mostly to Munich in place of Crystal but, that's not set in stone. I have a few with 4-8 oz of 40. Mostly in West Coast style IPAs.

 

[smata67]

Depends on hops used. If you are using strongly flavored and dank hops, the crystal tends to balance them off and make for a good beer. If you are using mild flavored and aroma hops and neutral bittering hops like Horizon and Magnum, then you end up with an overly sweet beer balanced more towards the caramel flavors, which makes for a boring APA or IPA. I think IPAs should be boldly flavored on the hop side, no room for weak flavored hops in my IPAs.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

There is no right answer. I have been finding that over the years I have been reducing the amount of Caramel that I use and moving toward lighter colored Caramel malts. The last IPA that I brewed that I REALLY enjoyed had 4% C20 (along with Pale, Wheat and Carapils). I tried brewing a Pale Ale that was just Pale + Munich 15 + Wheat and felt that it was lacking some of the Pale Ale character so I will probably move back to around 5% C40. I just got back from a trip to Scotland, and I really enjoyed many of the malty low ABV "IPA" beers, that I suspect use a decent percent of Caramel malts (along with darker Pale Ale Malt).

I am a little curious about Honey Malt, which is an ingredient I have never used.

I have also realized that I mistook some oxidation flavors in my beers with Caramel character. Taking steps to reduce cold side aeration (especially during kegging) really improved the quality of my light colored hoppy beers. I brew a number of 1 gal hop sampler batches that I bottle, and I notice oxidation character in many of them. I also notice that bottled Pale/IPAs often have some stale/oxidation that I mistook for Caramel character (which for me is a slightly sweet papery character).

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Interesting. I was just reading a blog post by Ron Pattinson about Malt in WW I and one passage caught my eye...

I am curious what base malts they were using back then. I would not be surprised if it was at least a few degree darker than today's "English Pale Ale" Malt. It is also really odd to hear they were importing from "California, Chile and the Middle East".

My understanding is that English IPA before WWI were also massively hopped (similar to current West Coast IPAs) compared to more modern English IPAs. Given the hops they were using, it took a LOT of 3% hops to push beers into the 80 IBU range.

 

[brewbama]

That’s interesting. Just goes to show how different we all are. I’m ok up to ~4% med caramel or equivalent in a Pale beer and ~8% med + dark total caramel or equivalent in an Amber.

 

[Robert65]

I am curious what base malts they were using back then. I would not be surprised if it was at least a few degree darker than today's "English Pale Ale" Malt. It is also really odd to hear they were importing from "California, Chile and the Middle East".

My understanding is that English IPA before WWI were also massively hopped (similar to current West Coast IPAs) compared to more modern English IPAs. Given the hops they were using, it took a LOT of 3% hops to push beers into the 80 IBU range.

The Brits, brewing beer for the world on a little island, couldn't grow near enough, so they imported most of their barley (a lot of hops too, mostly from the Pac NW and Bohemia.) But all the malting was done in Britain. They had a much wider range of base malts than we are accustomed to. Pale ale malt was actually paler than current versions, more like lager malt. Mild ale malt was a little darker. There were many further gradations.

The IPAs were heavily hopped, but remember they also were aged at the brewery in casks for a long period (six months to two years) including Brett working on them, before release to the bottler/retailer, and then had further aging in the bottle before sale. So very little of that massive hop character survived when consumed. No doubt the beer had also darkened considerably through oxidation.

Dive into Ron's blog, it's fascinating stuff.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I am curious what base malts they were using back then. I would not be surprised if it was at least a few degree darker than today's "English Pale Ale" Malt. It is also really odd to hear they were importing from "California, Chile and the Middle East".

Not surprising really, considering the UK was producing something approaching half of all commercial beer on the world market, from a small island with limited agricultural resources. Turkish barley was quite sought after at the time.

But before 1900 it was pretty much all Chevallier, and I think it's no coincidence that as sweet, rich Chevallier was replaced in base malt by less characterful varieties after WWI, people started using crystal.

But it was by no means universal - even today the tradition in places like Manchester is not to use crystal in general (qv Boddingtons which is pretty much a SMaSH and which has always been known as IPA within the brewery). We've talked a lot in the past about how US brewers tend to be pretty heavy-handed with crystal when it comes to British styles at least, whether it's because crystal is most heavily used in the touristy areas of the Thames Valley, they experience underconditioned cask beer in said touristy areas, or there's differences in ingredients either side of the Atlantic. London Pride uses 7% crystal and that's about as much as I can take, I find some of the Thames Valley beers undrinkably sweet.

My understanding is that English IPA before WWI were also massively hopped (similar to current West Coast IPAs) compared to more modern English IPAs. Given the hops they were using, it took a LOT of 3% hops to push beers into the 80 IBU range.

Remember that in almost every case we don't know what IBU the finished beer had, we just know they used X amount of hops - but in many cases we barely know what region they came from let alone what variety they were. It makes quite a difference whether you're using fresh hops from a cold store or some that have been lying around for years at ambient temperatures, and whether you're using something as relatively high in alpha as Goldings or traditional varieties like Grape, Colgate and Tolhurst.

 

[bierhaus15]

There are significant differences between caramel and crystal malts, even though the terms are used interchangeably in the US. Generally, caramel malts are produced in a kiln and crystal in a roasting drum, resulting in different amounts of carmelized/crystalized starch in the grain. Then there is the practice of blending caramel malts with very lightly kilned malts to hit color and flavor targets, as is often the case in Germany.

What this all comes down to is that using 5% crystal 60L malt with full crystalization will taste far sweeter than a similar caramel 60L product made in a kiln, where only half of the starch is caramelized (the remaining is essentially toasted). Similarly, using 10% carahell malt in a bockbier may sound insane, but in reality only 3-4% of that total could be crystalized starch. For a US example, a beer like Celebration Ale uses 10% caramel malt and while sweet, it is not cloyingly so, at least when fresh. Brew that same recipe with a UK crystal malt and it is undrinkable. My last point is that you can add toasty-biscuit complexity to beer using caramel malts that you generally don't get when using crystal malts; this is useful when brewing with neutral US/Canadian pale malts.

 

[Robert65]

^^^^

Note that all of Briess' so-called Caramel malts are in fact drum roasted crystals, fully glassy. To find a true caramel malt you generally need to look to a continental European source, and even then examine carefully. There are some craft maltsters in the US and Canada producing kilned caramel malts now.

 

[bierhaus15]

Breiss does use drums for their caramel, although the C60L is not entirely glassy; typically containing a fair amount of starch when analyzed with a farinator.

 

[Denny]

I think I've come to the realization that I don't like ANY crystal in my pales and IPAs. I feel like the added sweetness, even at 2% of the grist, clashes with hops for some reason. Anyone have similar experiences with crystal malt?

Nope. Love it and use it frequently.