Pale ale without crystal?

[RootDownBrewing]

Curious to hear from those who have brewed pale ales or any beer for that matter without crystal how the turned out? Is it a much dryer session beer?

I'm interested in brewing something like this with 30-40 ibu's:

90% pale malt
8% munich
2% victory

I've just never really brewed anything without crystal so I'm not sure what to expect.

 

[Bensiff]

It all depends on how you mash it. You can push for making it less fermentable and get more body and sweetness or you can push it to being really dry, of course your yeast selection and hopping will have an impact as well. Not my cup of tea, I like a little something else in my grain bill, but there is plenty outside the crystal realm you can use.

Edit: I had a page load issue and only say the first sentence of your post. Yeah, you should be fine with that brew, it will keep excessive malt character from interferring with the hop profile.

 

[ghank15]

I think your grain bill will be fine.

I made an ipa with Vienna malt once. Turned out pretty good.

The Munich will add some color and the victory should definitely add character.

 

[Jwood]

well, not necessarily a drier session beer. You can still make a high ABV beer without crystal malts. A beer without crystal malts just wont have that crystal malt sweetness. Personally i like it, i don't feel that crystal malts need a strong presence in pale ales and (especially) IPA's, but again that is a personal opinion. I tend to favor the malt flavor you get from biscuit, vienna, munich, victory, etc. rather than the sweetness from the lower lovibond crystal malts.

If you want to keep that body of the beer, you will simply just mash higher to extract those longer chain sugars. The sweetness obtained from this won't generally compare to the sweetness from crystal malts though (if at all).