Favorite/Most versatile grains

[jeepinjeepin]

What are your favorite/most versatile grains?

Some sort of pale malt is a given. American 2 row or Marris Otter we know are very common. If you wanted to make the most recipes with the fewest grains what else would you get? Munich? Vienna? Roasted Barley? If you could only get one type of Crystal malt which one would it be?

 

[BenjaminBier]

If I could only choose 2 malts for the rest of my life I would choose weyermann pils and weyermann wheat malt. Varying combinations and techniques could make most of my (and wifey's) favorites.

Pils, kolsch, hefeweizen, Berliner weisse, common. It's a lonely group without dunkelweizen but I'd cope.

 

[Homebrewt]

2 row and cara pils are in a lot of recipes, then you could go purchase a few oz of specialty grains for each brew.

-Cheers

 

[mhenry41h]

Golden Promise and Golden Naked Oats

 

[jeepinjeepin]

2 row and cara pils are in a lot of recipes, then you could go purchase a few oz of specialty grains for each brew.

-Cheers

Yeah. I already have a sack of Marris Otter. I can get great deals through a local production brewery. I am tossing around the idea of taking a couple hundred bucks and buying several sacks of different stuff and selling off what I won't use in, say, a years time. Right now I'm trying to decide what those sacks are gonna be.

 

[BeerLogic]

+1 to Golden Promise. I've recently gotten into home toasting and making my own crystal malt, and GP works great as a base for this. I've made amber, brown, and crystal 40 out of it, which means I can brew everything from the palest lager to a brown porter with just one kind of grain. I currently have a brown ale on tap and an IPA in the fermentor made this way. Great stuff!

For my next round of brews I'm going to make some crystal 80 and caramel syrup for a caramel amber like KingBrianI's and toast some to about 10L for a cherry bock.

 

[mhenry41h]

+1 to Golden Promise. I've recently gotten into home toasting and making my own crystal malt, and GP works great as a base for this. I've made amber, brown, and crystal 40 out of it, which means I can brew everything from the palest lager to a brown porter with just one kind of grain. I currently have a brown ale on tap and an IPA in the fermentor made this way. Great stuff!

For my next round of brews I'm going to make some crystal 80 and caramel syrup for a caramel amber like KingBrianI's and toast some to about 10L for a cherry bock.

Maris Otter gets all of the love as a "special" base malt but I prefer golden promise for it's versatility especially regarding color. I just bottled an American Wheat using GP, White Wheat, Pale Wheat, and Flaked Wheat. I suck at telling how a beer will taste when I sample it at bottling, but this one tastes as good as any. Can't wait for 2 weeks to pass!

 

[BeerLogic]

Maris Otter gets all of the love as a "special" base malt but I prefer golden promise for it's versatility especially regarding color. I just bottled an American Wheat using GP, White Wheat, Pale Wheat, and Flaked Wheat. I suck at telling how a beer will taste when I sample it at bottling, but this one tastes as good as any. Can't wait for 2 weeks to pass!

I bet if you toasted some GP to about 4.5L it would make a better English pale ale than Maris Otter!

 

[mhenry41h]

I bet if you toasted some GP to about 4.5L it would make a better English pale ale than Maris Otter!

How do you know what degree lovibond you have toasted to? Seems like an awesome endeavor, but I have no clue how it would be done!

 

[Mermaid]

Maris Otter is lovely. I could brew a few different "house" ales with it.
I'm also fond of Belgian 2 row (I brew a lot of Belgian ales)

 

[logan3825]

I use Special B a bit.

 

[jeepinjeepin]

I just happened upon the MO by chance at a great price. I probably would have gotten plain ole 2-row had I been shopping.

 

[BeerLogic]

How do you know what degree lovibond you have toasted to? Seems like an awesome endeavor, but I have no clue how it would be done!

Approximation, really. 20 minutes at 250F will get you to about 10L according to the chart in Radical Brewing, so I would say half that should do the trick.

When I do my next round of brews I'm going to document my toasting and crystal malt making procedures and post them here.

 

[Token]

I can't seem to work without C-60 and Victory.

 

[Randar]

But other than the standard 2-row and MO, what is the original question? Favorite malt is going to be highly dependent on the types of beers one brews.

 

[CrookedTail]

Munich and Wheat malt.

 

[jeepinjeepin]

But other than the standard 2-row and MO, what is the original question? Favorite malt is going to be highly dependent on the types of beers one brews.

Exactly. I was leaving it open ended for that reason. What beers do you brew? What grains could you not live without?