Golden Promise or Maris Otter

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millstone

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Looking for some advise. Currently I brew 4 types of ales - Irish Red, Scottish, IPA and APA. If you were to purchase a sack of one type of base grain, which one would you suggest for the four ale types listed? Should a certain ale type not use one of these grains? The grain that I have an opportunity of picking up locally is Thomas Fawcett and Sons Ltd.

thanks

tom
 
Maris Otter If I were you. Golden Promise is good, but you really cant go wrong for a great all around base malt like MO
 
I haven't brewed with Golden Promise, but I sure do like me some Maris Otter.
 
Ale - Golden Promise Malt (Bairds)
EBC 5 - 7 (mash required): This Scottish Spring barley produces a sweet, clean
flavour. The sole malt variety in Timothy Taylors much awarded Landlord Ale.





Ale - Maris Otter Malt (Bairds)
EBC 5 - 7 (mash required): This winter barley is a firm base malt favourite
amongst brewers. It has the rich, nutty character sought in british Ales.


For use in four different styles, go the MO. Both good. Different harvest, different results. Buy both
 
I want to thank everyone for their input; I will be going with the MO. As storage space permits, I may just go with having both on hand. I’m brewing with my son and we are very new at it, just started out in December 2006. We did about 5 extract batches with some steeping grains, and then moved on to partial mash after building the mash tun. We have since moved on to doing all grain full boils (two batches). We purchased a monster mill to help in the crush (a bump of 10% efficiency first crush) and will now start to buy the grain in bulk. This one bag alone will save us about half the cost of the mill, plus that bump in efficiency, and this efficiency is on top of my having the local brew store double crushing the grains only because of the many comments made here about the pour grind people were getting from their LHBS.
One other comment, This site has some GREAT brewers who are very willing to help us new guys, even if we ask the same questions over and over again.

Thanks

tom
 
Everyone here seems to be MO fans. Before we started brewing, we did the same research and found that, with brewers who had tried both, there was a slight preference edge towards Golden Promise. On the other hand, numerous brewers were actually using MO regardless of their preference due to better availability.
 
Thanks Nate for this additional information. I'm purchasing my grain from North Country Malt Supply (NY) they have a warehouse near me in Hammond IN, about 7 miles away, so I get to pickup the grain and save on shipping (and taxes). They have both types on hand (Thomas Fawcett). When space for storage permits, I might just purchase a sack of GP for the Scottish and Irish ales (love the pic of the Scottish ale on your web site). I just calculated the savings on the two sacks I ordered, purchased some Best German Munich malt also, against my LHBS and the savings came to $123. Well that just paid for the Monster Mill I just purchased.

thanks

tom
 
I've used MO for a number of brews and have been quite happy with it.

I've been meaning to try the GP, as I have heard it is similar.

Now, how about one more option?

For my latest brew, a sweet stout, I was at my LHBS picking up ingredients, and was intending to use MO. Well, they were out of it. They immediately suggested not GP, which they did have, but a Belgian Pilsner malt. Before I could open my skeptical mouth, I was handed a glass of an Ordinary Bitter brewed with Belgian Pilsner. It took about 2 sips before I was convinced to give it a try. I can't wait for that stout to finish.
 
Crisp's Maris Finest malt is low in protein, 8 to 10%, which is good. The less protein the more sugar. Always refer to the malt spec sheet that comes with every bag of malt before buying malt, they are online. High quality malt contains less than 10% protein with Kolbach Index (KI) 40 and lower. To produce maybe a more authentic ale and lager Heritage malt would be a good choice because a bag of it contains a mixture of high quality, low protein, under modified, malt, 9% protein and modification at KI 34 to 40 and high protein, high modified to over modified, malt 14% protein and 42 to 51 KI. That would be malt that brewers would have used before brew master learned how to test malt and before the founding of the IOB (Institute of Brewers).
 
For a while I was using 50/50 MO and GP for all my pale ale and IPA base malts in recipes.

Now I use GP for hoppier beers and MO for my maltier/darker beers.
 
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