Roast without the color?

[AnthonyCB]

I'd like to make a pale ale with a touch of roasted flavor. I know people most commonly add roasted barley in small quantities for the color trying to avoid the flavor, but I'd rather get the flavor but not get the color. Is roasted barley the best ingredient to impart a hint of roasted flavor with a minimum of color? Are chocolate, Special B, caraamber, special roast or Black Patent malt better or worse for this? I know that people cold steep debittered Carafa malts to extract color preferentially over flavor. Has anyone hot steeped (mashing temp or higher) a few oz of roasted barley for a relatively short amount of time then incorporated the liquor into the mash or boil kettle? Any thoughts on whether using uncrushed or coarsly crushed grain would impact flavor vs color extraction? How much would you add to a typical ale (5.5% ABV) to get a slight roasted flavor (I'm looking for a touch of roastiness in the finish, not a full on bitter/stout taste when the beer first hits your palate)? Beersmith thinks that it'll 2 oz will add 6 srm and 4 oz will add 10 srm.

Thanks,

Anthony

 

[BrewerinBR]

I'd like to make a pale ale with a touch of roasted flavor. I know people most commonly add roasted barley in small quantities for the color trying to avoid the flavor, but I'd rather get the flavor but not get the color. Is roasted barley the best ingredient to impart a hint of roasted flavor with a minimum of color? Are chocolate, Special B, caraamber, special roast or Black Patent malt better or worse for this? I know that people cold steep debittered Carafa malts to extract color preferentially over flavor. Has anyone hot steeped (mashing temp or higher) a few oz of roasted barley for a relatively short amount of time then incorporated the liquor into the mash or boil kettle? Any thoughts on whether using uncrushed or coarsly crushed grain would impact flavor vs color extraction? How much would you add to a typical ale (5.5% ABV) to get a slight roasted flavor (I'm looking for a touch of roastiness in the finish, not a full on bitter/stout taste when the beer first hits your palate)? Beersmith thinks that it'll 2 oz will add 6 srm and 4 oz will add 10 srm.

Thanks,

Anthony

Lots of questions here. First to get a roasted malt flavor without adding color I take 1 lb of pale malt or pale ale malt and spread it out on a sheet pan and roast it in the oven at 350 for up to 45 minutes stirring every 10 to 15 minutes until I get it to the toasted/roasted flavor I want. The pale malt will darken some but not that much so it adds very little color but a wonderful toasty nutty roasty flavor. I haven even done this over a beechwood fire to get a nice smokey flavor also. Chocolate will add a more bitter coffee flavor, other roasted barley's both malted and unmalted will add a bready or biscuit flavor knows as biscuit malts, some will be like sour dough bread. All add some color but roasted malts go a long way so you can get the taste at low percentages like 1 to 5 % of total grain bill. I have steeped grains as part of a partial mash but never cold steeped. Black malts will add a lot of color and a heavy roasted strong coffee like flavor good for stouts and the like but not pale beers. Uncrushed grain may add color but would be wasteful IMO as no flavor or sugar (or not much) would be gained and getting the color is easier in other ways. I use 1 lb of toasted malt in my amber ales with a total of 13 lbs of grain and get about 6.5% abv. so about 1% of the grain bill. The color of toasted pale would be about 5 to 7 SRM.

 

[ArcaneXor]

I have been wondering about this as well - I would play with Special Roast and Brown Malt.

 

[AnthonyCB]

I take 1 lb of pale malt or pale ale malt and spread it out on a sheet pan and roast it in the oven at 350 for up to 45 minutes stirring every 10 to 15 minutes until I get it to the toasted/roasted flavor I want.

This is just victory/biscuit malt. Caraamber and Special Roast are made this way.

I'm actually looking for a hint of burnt rather than toasty.

 

[beergynt]

Brown Malt.

 

[AnthonyCB]

Brown Malt.

What percent would you typically use?

 

[beergynt]

I made a couple pale ales that combined Citra and that roasty character that brown malt brings. I finished it with Perle. Those recipes had about 6% brown malt... A lot of folks questioned my sanity for wanting to combine the two, but it turned out to be delicious and well balanced. That being said, I recently made a porter with 18% brown malt and it was roasty as Hell. A little bit goes a long way.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Sorry to be OT, I'm just very curious as to why you don't want the colour. Not trying be funny or anything, just genuinely curious.

 

[AnthonyCB]

I made a couple pale ales that combined Citra and that roasty character that brown malt brings. I finished it with Perle. Those recipes had about 6% brown malt... A lot of folks questioned my sanity for wanting to combine the two, but it turned out to be delicious and well balanced. That being said, I recently made a porter with 18% brown malt and it was roasty as Hell. A little bit goes a long way.

That actually sounds great. There's a brewery in Denmark that makes a brown ale with citra called Kama Citra that is absolutely fantastic.

Thanks,

Anthony

 

[AnthonyCB]

Sorry to be OT, I'm just very curious as to why you don't want the colour. Not trying be funny or anything, just genuinely curious.

I guess I want it to sneak up on people. Lots of people react strangely to dark beers.

 

[BrewerinBR]

This is just victory/biscuit malt. Caraamber and Special Roast are made this way.

I'm actually looking for a hint of burnt rather than toasty.

Actually Caraamber and special roast are not made this way.

The typical process to make brown malt is to use pale malt and toast it in an oven/kiln until it is the desired color. In the 15th and 16th and into the 17th century brown malt was all there was as it was kilned in a wood fired oven so it had a smokey flavor as well.

Caraamber is a crystal malt and was kilned at high temp while still moist and special roast is a Briess product made in a patented process but it certainly is not kilned or toasted pale malt.

If your seeking a burnt flavor without the color then I would get some unmalted barley and place in in a sheet pan and put in the broiler in your over, make sure you do a little at a time so it is only a single layer deep and watch it closely as a broiler is very hot. Broil it for a few minutes until it starts to turn brown and then take it our. It will continue to cook as it cools. Taste it to see if it is the flavor you want and keep experimenting. Watch because it will burn fast and give you black very fast.

 

[teucer]

What percent would you typically use?

As much as you want. You can brew a beer with nothing else (and, indeed, that's how an 18th-century English proto-porter would have been done.)

 

[teucer]

The typical process to make brown malt is to use pale malt and toast it in an oven/kiln until it is the desired color. In the 15th and 16th and into the 17th century brown malt was all there was as it was kilned in a wood fired oven so it had a smokey flavor as well.

Not quite. They started with non-dried malts, so the results were very probably more akin to modern high-kilned malts such as Munich. There was also sun-dried malt (paler than pils, with a touch of green flavor), and there were various clever ways of kilning malt that eliminated most of the smoky flavor (and made the color paler), such as using clean dry straw as fuel instead of wood. I doubt this gets you as pale as, say, a Vienna, but I haven't done the experiment.

 

[browillard]

You could also do a decoction mash. I successfully produced two lagers with light color but a nice malty flavor with a single decoction. Check into it. It's a bit more work but in my opinion it is worth it.

 

[AnthonyCB]

Actually Caraamber and special roast are not made this way.

The typical process to make brown malt is to use pale malt and toast it in an oven/kiln until it is the desired color. In the 15th and 16th and into the 17th century brown malt was all there was as it was kilned in a wood fired oven so it had a smokey flavor as well.

Caraamber is a crystal malt and was kilned at high temp while still moist and special roast is a Briess product made in a patented process but it certainly is not kilned or toasted pale malt.

If your seeking a burnt flavor without the color then I would get some unmalted barley and place in in a sheet pan and put in the broiler in your over, make sure you do a little at a time so it is only a single layer deep and watch it closely as a broiler is very hot. Broil it for a few minutes until it starts to turn brown and then take it our. It will continue to cook as it cools. Taste it to see if it is the flavor you want and keep experimenting. Watch because it will burn fast and give you black very fast.

What you are doing falls somewhere between Brown malt and Amber/Biscuit malt.

From "Radical Brewing" the section for Amber/Biscuit Malt page 44:

Roast pale ale malt at 200 F for 15-20 minutes, then raise to 250-300F for a few more minutes Briess' version called "Victory".

Same page Brown Malt:

Traditionally made by rapidly heating pale ale malt to 350F over an oak fire, and held for 2 hours or until a rich brown color is reached.

From "Designing Great Beers":

Procedure for Amber Malt

1. 45 minutes at 230F
2. Twenty to sixty minutes at 300F...

Procedure for Brown Malt
Follow the procedure for amber malt. After the proper endosperm color is achieved raise the oven temperature to 350 F and continue heating until the endosperm is a full buff color or "about the color of the paler types of brown wrapping paper."

 

[BenS]

I think most people will interpret roast without the color as grain astringency. So you could just sparge the heck out of your mash. Basically, I wouldn't do it.

 

[BenS]

You could also do a decoction mash. I successfully produced two lagers with light color but a nice malty flavor with a single decoction. Check into it. It's a bit more work but in my opinion it is worth it.

Decoction mashes add color to the beer.

 

[BrewerinBR]

What you are doing falls somewhere between Brown malt and Amber/Biscuit malt.

From "Radical Brewing" the section for Amber/Biscuit Malt page 44:

Roast pale ale malt at 200 F for 15-20 minutes, then raise to 250-300F for a few more minutes Briess' version called "Victory".

Same page Brown Malt:

Traditionally made by rapidly heating pale ale malt to 350F over an oak fire, and held for 2 hours or until a rich brown color is reached.

From "Designing Great Beers":

Procedure for Amber Malt

1. 45 minutes at 230F
2. Twenty to sixty minutes at 300F...

Procedure for Brown Malt
Follow the procedure for amber malt. After the proper endosperm color is achieved raise the oven temperature to 350 F and continue heating until the endosperm is a full buff color or "about the color of the paler types of brown wrapping paper."

Agree making brown malt would be similar to the process to make regular amber or biscuit malt, but more personal and controlled to what I want, to the taste I am looking for.
I like to make my brown malt from 6 row brewers malt over a fire (I use beech since I have lots of it) --- doing 2 pounds of it now for Scotch Ale I am planning.
Like this --- and some mixed with oats.