malts that add sweetness

[WitShadow]

Oh look, I had already provided an answer in June. Silly me! The notification popped up and only showed the initial question, but glad to hear you found the sweet spot! ;-)

 

[stickyfinger]

Oh look, I had already provided an answer in June. Silly me! The notification popped up and only showed the initial question, but glad to hear you found the sweet spot! ;-)

yeah, good advice.

 

[stickyfinger]

I find you get ample sweetness with a little blend of caramel and munich malts - go lighter or darker based on your own goals and preferences, and Vienna works too. Frankly, if you're finding enough sweetness in the IPA's you buy but not your own, then this should be enough as most recipes stick to this route. Remember that the base of a great IPA is all about the balance between bitter hops and sweet malt, and most brewers can do it with just these basics.



If you want to take it a step further than most American IPAs, try Maris Otter for your base malt instead of US or German pale ale malts. However, if you find your beers to be too dry, do not go across the pond for your yeast - be sure to stick with the US ale yeasts, not English or Irish ones. You can also mash at higher temps for a fuller body which adds to the perception of sweetness, if not actual sweetness, and do not add any sugar to your boil, which (possibly counterintuitively) lightens the body and thus reduces the perception of creamy sweetness in favor of crisp dryness.



If none of that works, add an unfermentable sweetener like lactose. I haven't tried a "milk IPA" yet but who knows?! Cheers!

i think the english yeasts can work great in american ipa. i like wlp002 especially

 

[Roland_deschain]

I find you get ample sweetness with a little blend of caramel and munich malts - go lighter or darker based on your own goals and preferences, and Vienna works too. Frankly, if you're finding enough sweetness in the IPA's you buy but not your own, then this should be enough as most recipes stick to this route. Remember that the base of a great IPA is all about the balance between bitter hops and sweet malt, and most brewers can do it with just these basics.

If you want to take it a step further than most American IPAs, try Maris Otter for your base malt instead of US or German pale ale malts. However, if you find your beers to be too dry, do not go across the pond for your yeast - be sure to stick with the US ale yeasts, not English or Irish ones. You can also mash at higher temps for a fuller body which adds to the perception of sweetness, if not actual sweetness, and do not add any sugar to your boil, which (possibly counterintuitively) lightens the body and thus reduces the perception of creamy sweetness in favor of crisp dryness.

If none of that works, add an unfermentable sweetener like lactose. I haven't tried a "milk IPA" yet but who knows?! Cheers!

I’ve been doing a version of a Mango Milkshake IPA for a while now. Lactose in an IPA makes no sense on paper but the finished product is quite tasty.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

try Maris Otter for your base malt instead of US or German pale ale malts. However, if you find your beers to be too dry, do not go across the pond for your yeast - be sure to stick with the US ale yeasts, not English or Irish ones.

If you want a sweet Otter, get Fawcetts and avoid Crisp. Otter may have a bit too much character for the OP, but personally I think you need a bit of character from the malt to balance a well-hopped beer. And complexity is always good.

Yeast - huh? Attenuation is (loosely) tied up with flocculation, and if you're producing cask beer then you need a good floccer. That's why trad cask bitter usually has a sweet finish to it (along with the crystal). Strains like 1968 and 1469 flocc well (particularly the former!) and have official attenuations of 67-71% - hardly high.

You're thinking of Burton strains which needed high attenuation to avoid secondary fermentation when exported. But in many ways they are not "typical" of "English" yeasts.

 

[2005732]

I was looking for an alternative to crystal malt in my IPAs, so I tried 1lb of honey as an experiment in a 5g batch. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between that and c10. I won't use it for that purpose again, but there was nothing wrong with it, i just couldn't discern a difference.