There's a Hop Oil Calculator - Is there a Malt Characteristic Calculator?

[Vedexent]

So I had a bit of an epiphany today reading up on hops: hops contain different ratios of particular essential oils + each of those oils contribute their own signature flavor and aroma = the essential oil profile of your hop mixture & the chemical reactions you subject those hops to in the boil results in the signature hop flavor in your batch.

Cool!

It all clicked into place for me because of this chart and this calculator.

So ... thinking back on the Home Brew Talk malt chart, I got wondering: can you do the same for Malt characteristics?

For example: Carafoam typically has X% of Dextrin by weight, so if I add Y grams to my recipe, I'll have Z g/liter of wort, which roughly corresponds to "High" head retention?

Does such a tool exist anywhere? Is there corresponding chemistry for such malt characteristics as Chocolate, Coffee, Grainy, Head, Malty, Nutty, etc?

I realize that this would be complicated by the mashing profile - activating different enzymes for different length of time, would transform the chemistry and thus change some of these characteristics.

If this can be done, then it would make creating a grain bill so much easier: "OK, I want a high head retention, with low malt sweetness, and a medium level of nutty flavor - so I'll add 1.5 Kg of this, and 0.5 Kg of that ... nope, too sweet, let's add that instead ... perfect!".

Of course, this can't take away all of the "art" of brewing. Great chefs don't work in a chemistry lab, they work in a kitchen. Such a tool might get you "in the ballpark" - and get you a lot closer then just winging it - but sliding exactly into home plate would still be up to your experience and instinct.

 

[doomy86]

Great idea, i did not know about the hop calculator.

There are also the "Malz Aroma Rad" charts from weyermann:

https://www.weyermann.de/ger/gelbe_seiten.asp?go=mr&umenue=yes&idmenue=2&sprache=1

 

[Vedexent]

There are also the "Malz Aroma Rad" charts from weyermann:

https://www.weyermann.de/ger/gelbe_seiten.asp?go=mr&umenue=yes&idmenue=2&sprache=1

That is awesome, thank you!

It looks like Weyermann has charts for both "whole grain" and "wort" presence for 41 of their malts.

If such a tool doesn't exist- this the kind of data which could be used to make a "Malt Calculator" in the same fashion.

I'm thinking a weighted average, by a malt variety's percentage by weight?

Example:

Picking some malts and proportions at random - Oak Smoked Wheat & Munich, in a 25%/75% split, using the wort flavor profiles.

1. The Weyermann chart for Oak Smoked Wheat - says (in part): Wood Smoke: 3.5, Malty Sweet 2, Bready 1.25
2. The Weyermann chart for Munich - says (in part): Wood Smoke: 0, Malty Sweet 4.25, Bready 2.25

Doing a weighted average by percentage gives us: Wood Smoke: 0.9, Malty Sweet 3.7, Bready 1.5

Or I'd read that as "Strong malty sweet with a bready note, and a smokey background flavor" (although that sounds pretentious ).​

What do you think? Does that seem to make sense?

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The cool thing is that this doesn't rely on chemistry, but on people's evaluations of the Malts based on predefined "taste categories".

This means that this is data that could be crowd sourced: "Want to help the Malt Profile calculators? Steep X grams of your malt in Y ml of water, for Z minutes, at Q centigrade, and evaluate the taste on this chart."

The more samples for a malt, the better, as averages and curves emerge (and wonky outliers can be weeded out).

Expand that out over all their taste categories, and across multiple malt producers, and you have a really good tool for evaluating the final malt characteristics of your wort.

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Now ... Yeast Esters ....

 

[JohnSand]

Thanks for the hop calculator link. It will help in formulating and evaluating recipes.
The malt calculator is an interesting idea.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

I had thought about this as well.

I'm of the belief that % doesn't matter so much as lb of grain per post boil gallon.

Use whatever mash parameters they're listing for their congress mash (or asbc hot steep mash) as a baseline, then crowdsource it if necessary.

Briess lists most of their malts flavor profiles here as well, using a congress mash.

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Products

 

[JohnSand]

I checked out the hop oil calculator. I ran my current IIPA through it, the result was mild, spicy, floral. But in fact it is strong and citrusy. The hops were Columbus, Centennial, Simcoe.

 

[Fedora]

The malt characteristic calculator is best served in a tulip glass.

 

[Vedexent]

I checked out the hop oil calculator. I ran my current IIPA through it, the result was mild, spicy, floral. But in fact it is strong and citrusy. The hops were Columbus, Centennial, Simcoe.

I'm not sure the calculator takes hop oil isomerization into consideration. It doesn't seem to have settings for boil time - just pre-fermenting, steeping, and dry-hopping.

 

[Vedexent]

I'm of the belief that % doesn't matter so much as lb of grain per post boil gallon.

Do you mean the ratios of the different kinds of malt (relative pounds of grain per post boil gallon)?

That would make sense to me: up the proportion of a malt, and its influence should increase.

Thanks for the Briess reference

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Do you mean the ratios of the different kinds of malt (relative pounds of grain per post boil gallon)?

That would make sense to me: up the proportion of a malt, and its influence should increase.

Thanks for the Briess reference

Like in a linear algebra or weighted average sense.

12 lb of marris in a 5.5 gal batch gives 2 A + 3 B + 4 C + 0.5 D etc

2 lbs of vienna gives .2 A + 1 B + 0.5 C + 0.4 D + 3 E

Net result = 2.2 A + 4 B + 4.5 C + 0.9 D + 3 E.

 

[Fedora]

Like in a linear algebra or weighted average sense.

12 lb of marris in a 5.5 gal batch gives 2 A + 3 B + 4 C + 0.5 D etc

2 lbs of vienna gives .2 A + 1 B + 0.5 C + 0.4 D + 3 E

Net result = 2.2 A + 4 B + 4.5 C + 0.9 D + 3 E.

And how does that taste with no reference point?

 

[Vedexent]

Like in a linear algebra or weighted average sense.

12 lb of marris in a 5.5 gal batch gives 2 A + 3 B + 4 C + 0.5 D etc

2 lbs of vienna gives .2 A + 1 B + 0.5 C + 0.4 D + 3 E

Net result = 2.2 A + 4 B + 4.5 C + 0.9 D + 3 E.

OK - I can see that.

My calculations were looking at the relative strengths of the flavors with regards to one another.

I think your calculations are looking at the total strength of the flavors in the post boil volume - but your calculations also show the relative strengths in the final answer, so I think your approach is better.

My approach can tell you that I have twice as much "biscuit" as "smoke" - but yours can tell me that by the time I get as much total "smoke" as I want, my level of "biscuit" is totally overpowering.

I think that the total strength ends up being Kg/L ( lb / gal ).

If we were asking people to rate "malt teas" to create flavor profiles, then you'd need to specify the amount of malt and amount of water to rate against.

 

[Vedexent]

And how does that taste with no reference point?

That's what I was thinking, but since we're already asking people to subjectively rate a Malt's "flavor strength" - lets say 0 is absent, 1 is background perceptible ... 5 is overpowering - then we do have a reference point.

If I have a malt with a smokiness of 5, and I add a little of it to 2-row which has a smokiness of 0, so that the final "calculated strength" is 1, then I have - according to the scale above - a background flavor of smoke.

If, instead, I added pure smoked malt, then I would expect that I would have a 5 - which is overpowering.

Yes - it's all subjective ratings, but we're talking about merging and averaging many subjective ratings of a single malt. So - if everyone else rates a malt's "raisin" characteristic as 1-2 on the scale, and I rate it 5 ... my 5 is going to get averaged out.

It's not really rigorous science - but we could predict roughly how people in general would perceive a malt mix.

There will always be people with outlier palletes who perceive it differently, however.

This would only be a tool to roughly shape a malt taste/flavor profile. The rest would still be up to experience and experimentation. Like I said, this would only get you in the ballpark.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Exactly. I had spent some time thinking about this and started a calculator like scotts, but I scraped it for the time being. It's on my softwares to-do list, but I need to finish cleaning up then doing recipe formulation, then I'll work on the hop flavor profile predictor and malt flavor profile predictor, which obviously will be WIP guesswork but still interesting.

 

[Vedexent]

If you wanted to add complexity to any of these - and who wouldn't want to! - let's not forget the hop oil isomerizations & malt maillard reactions!

( kidding - the thought of trying to factor in the boil chemistry gives me a headache )