Just something I have noticed in the last few weeks being repeated. Recipes without Crystal malts. I only started brewing last year, but I remember seeing Crystal in most if the recipes I found. Is this a thing?
Just something I have noticed in the last few weeks being repeated. Recipes without Crystal malts. I only started brewing last year, but I remember seeing Crystal in most if the recipes I found. Is this a thing?
I see thread after thread after thread on here that leads with "My beer is too sweet" and I look at the recipe and there is a pound or more of crystal malt in it.
I use C120 and Special B as my base malts.
I've never had a problem with sweetness left behind by crystal malt. I've had astringency issues, but never sweetness issues. The sugars produced are pretty fermentable, especially if used as part of a mash with a high enough diastatic power. The biggest problem I've had related to sweetness is underhopping.
Over the years, I've reached the conclusion that crystal malts are the most unnecessarily used malts. I keep my usage under 8oz for 5 gallons unless I want to keep it sweet.
I see thread after thread after thread on here that leads with "My beer is too sweet" and I look at the recipe and there is a pound or more of crystal malt in it.
Don't get me wrong. Crystal malts have their time and place. But unless you specifically want to taste the sweetness they leave behind, you should use just enough to get your desired SRM and not any more.
I use C120 and Special B as my base malts.
I may make a Doppel Bock with that name now.Billy's Sessionable CaraKlubb
a good number of us didn't color inside the lines when we were teenagers.Unless I am brewing a Saison or dry stout,I use a minimum of 5% crystal of some sort. English styles get 10% and the same amount of sugar(balance?).
Hate CaraHell,even 5% of the grain bill can make it too sweet.
Trends are for trend followers. Trend followers are sheep/ever-teenagers
It's not fermentability vs unfermentability. Crystal malts impart a sweet flavor.
I believe someone posted awhile back that Red X is a mix of Munich and Melanioden malts. I used it 100% once in a 1.050 lager and it turned out a really nice malty red colored lager.
FWIW, one of the best extract IPA's I've made so far didn't have any crystal malt in it, just 1 lb. of steeped Victory malt and Munton's "Light" DME. Bittered with Summit and flavored/dry hopped with Falconer's Flight.
And to reiterate, ALL sweetness is either fermentable or non-fermentable, making fermentability necessarily part of the discussion on crystal malt.
You know the random usage of caps lock totally makes your argument.
Or not.
Not all sweetness is fermentability vs non-fermentability. I'm talking about apparent sweetness. Apparent sweetness is not directly related to the actual amount of sugar in something. It's related to acidity, saltiness, fruitiness, flavor, texture, and aroma among other things.
For instance, you can mix sugar with lemon juice and still have a tart flavor because of the acidity. It takes quite a bit of sugar to overcome the tartness of the acidity and end up with a sweet lemonade.
Depending upon the lovibond of it, caramel malt flavors a are described as "candy like, mild caramel, sweet caramel, pronounced caramel, toffee, and burnt sugar". Those are not changed during fermentation. All of those flavors are ones your brain expects to taste sweet. You put those flavors in anything and your brain will make it taste sweeter than if they were not there.
If you use enough caramel malt so that you get a notocable candy/caramel/toffee flavor in your beer, you are going to perceive the beer as sweeter (regardless of the FG) than if you had kept those flavors from your beer and hit the same FG.
And if you use that caramel malt in a higher diastatic power wort, rather than steeping it at the end, many of those caramel flavors and aromas are broken down a bit further and create a slightly more astringent aromas, helping to mitigate that apparent sweetness.
I'm not saying that Caramel malt imparts no sweetness. I'm saying that the level of sweetness it imparts is influenced heavily by when you add it to the mash. Either way you have caramel or toffee aromas, yes. But depending on where you add it you have a different ratio of caramelized simple sugars and caramelized polysaccharides. A higher ratio of caramelized simple sugars increases fermentability, reduces actual sweetness in the final product, and heavily influences the direct and perceived sweetness.
For instance, if you caramelize sucrose... yes, it will be perceived in the final product as sweeter than a straight table sugar fermentation, but due to its high fermentability, it will also have a more astringent flavor to it. Doing the same thing with caramelized maltose, you will have an even sweeter final product, due to the maltose being less fermentable by yeast.
Adding your caramel malt early in the mash helps convert some of the polysaccharides in the malt into more simple sugars.
Sure, caramel aromas increase perceived sweetness, but that effect can be mitigated, so long as you're doing an AG brew.
Perceived sweetness is the ONLY sweetness that really matters.... obviously. The drinker's perception rather than the chemical analysis is what makes a good beer. With this in mind, I'm planning to use less crystal along with very small amounts of midnight wheat for color. The perception a drinker gets from a beer is based on many factors, and the visual perception is far more important than one might imagine. Your first impression of a person is visual, and it has a huge impact on how you relate to that person initially. The same is true of a beer. Color, Aroma, Flavor....... your mind processes all these things and spits out your reaction to the beer.
H.W.
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