menschmaschine
Well-Known Member
What exactly in the brewing process can produce a pleasant grainy character in a beer? What types of compounds are responsible for a grainy character?... proteins? (Not to be confused, per se, with maltiness... I know what can produce that.) Here's the background to my question:
I brewed a German Pils a little while back and am working on the 2nd keg of it. I don't buy commercial beer all that often, but I bought a 6-pack of Würzburger Hofbraü pils (Bavarian). The flavor of the Würzburger came across to me as very crisp and clean with not that much grainy character (or maltiness) compared to my German pils which is very grainy (IMO in a good way, not a tannin issue).
I'm not sure of the distinguishing line between "grainy" and "malty", but regardless of that, I didn't expect that much of a difference between the Würzburger and my pils in respect to the character from the malts. I brewed my pils using a Hochkurz-style step-mash and used 97.5% BestMalz pilsener malt and 2.5% BestMalz Cara-Pils and fermented with the Weihenstephaner W-34/70 strain. So, I half expected them to taste comparible (hops aside).
I'm not saying I want to change my German light lager brewing style, but I'm just curious to know more about the beers I produce and why they taste the way they do. Could it have to do with centrifuging/filtering of many commercial beers?... would that strip some of the grainy/malty flavor away?
I brewed a German Pils a little while back and am working on the 2nd keg of it. I don't buy commercial beer all that often, but I bought a 6-pack of Würzburger Hofbraü pils (Bavarian). The flavor of the Würzburger came across to me as very crisp and clean with not that much grainy character (or maltiness) compared to my German pils which is very grainy (IMO in a good way, not a tannin issue).
I'm not sure of the distinguishing line between "grainy" and "malty", but regardless of that, I didn't expect that much of a difference between the Würzburger and my pils in respect to the character from the malts. I brewed my pils using a Hochkurz-style step-mash and used 97.5% BestMalz pilsener malt and 2.5% BestMalz Cara-Pils and fermented with the Weihenstephaner W-34/70 strain. So, I half expected them to taste comparible (hops aside).
I'm not saying I want to change my German light lager brewing style, but I'm just curious to know more about the beers I produce and why they taste the way they do. Could it have to do with centrifuging/filtering of many commercial beers?... would that strip some of the grainy/malty flavor away?