What malt to use

[cmoewes]

I'm trying to understand some comments I have read on various recipe review posts.

Often people will recommend mor or less of a malt (like crystal in an IPA) or a different malt (again crystal 40L instead of 20L or 60L).

My question is, is that based on genetic knowledge, experience or is that information I can find in books or other reading materials.

 

[badlee]

You can find things like that in books and online when buying grain.

Sent from my GT-I8552B using Home Brew mobile app

 

[MichaelBrock]

The ability to give this sort of advice comes from experience with what the various malts add to the beer and familiarity with what a particular style should generally taste like. The BJCP guidelines and Jamil Zainasheff's style column (and the "30 Great Beer Styles" publication, which is a compilation of 30 of his style articles) are good places to learn what grains a style should/can contain. Leaning what the various malts add to a beer comes from tasting (the beer and the raw grains), lots of tasting!

 

[stpug]

Definitely genetic. You either have it or you don't

 

[stpug]

Just kidding

It primarily comes from experience and reading. Brew an IPA with 1.5 lb of crystal 40L, and then brew another with no crystal and just some victory or amber malt. Compare the resulting beers and decide which YOU prefer. Some folks want the crystal presence while others don't. It's mostly a matter of taste and preference.

 

[cmoewes]

The ability to give this sort of advice comes from experience with what the various malts add to the beer and familiarity with what a particular style should generally taste like. The BJCP guidelines and Jamil Zainasheff's style column (and the "30 Great Beer Styles" publication, which is a compilation of 30 of his style articles) are good places to learn what grains a style should/can contain. Leaning what the various malts add to a beer comes from tasting (the beer and the raw grains), lots of tasting!

I'll check those out. I've done a lot of reading and some experiments to understand what the different malts bring in terms of flavor and color, but not necessarily a reference for which malts should (or shouldn't) be used by style.

Thanks!

 

[aiptasia]

Books are your best source for understanding the basics of an underlying grain bill for a particular style. I would suggest picking up "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels and Jamil Zainascheff's "Brewing Classic Styles" for references. A quick and dirty approach is to look at the BJCP guidelines in conjunction with the recipes listed in the homebrew database.

Most of the recipes in the database will match up with the grain bill descriptions in the BJCP guidelines, especially for beers that have won BJCP sanctioned competitions. Compare the grain bills to similar beers.

Also, BYO often features a particular beer style in issues. You will find great discussions on what makes up a classic beer from that style as well as multiple recipes (many award winners) for the style that will clearly show you what's in them and at what ratios.

 

[strangegreenman]

All good advice. I'd like to add that 1-gallon pilot batches are fun for experimenting with malts... don't expect them to ferment the same way as the full batch size, though! They will have different yeast flavors.

 

[smccarter]

I'll check those out. I've done a lot of reading and some experiments to understand what the different malts bring in terms of flavor and color, but not necessarily a reference for which malts should (or shouldn't) be used by style.

Thanks!

This is a tough one... I've found it to be anyway. I've created several of my own recipes based on the BJCP, recipes found in various sources, etc... I like to play around with them by adding more of this, or removing some of that...

I used to almost agonize over it really. But got over that and just started brewing beer.

Two absolute certainties will happen when you start developing recipes, and share them with others....

1. You will be drinking a beer that you have never had before - your own creation, and

2. People will argue your choice of ingredients. "I wouldn't use that grain, or you should use this instead".

I'm not really interested in entering a beer into competition. I just like to drink and share the beer that I brew. I'll call my creation anything I want to call it...

 

[stpug]

I'll check those out. I've done a lot of reading and some experiments to understand what the different malts bring in terms of flavor and color, but not necessarily a reference for which malts should (or shouldn't) be used by style.

Thanks!

Like aiptasia posted, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels is an awesome write-up of various beer styles and the grains that go into each. The in-depth write-up on beers styles is in Part 2 of the book - Part 1 basically only needs to be read once but Part 2 is an extremely useful manual to refer back to when designing a beer to match a style. He does not touch on Belgian beers though. If you have a LHBS nearby, or the next time you're at one, check out their bookshelf for Designing Great Beers and look up a style in Part 2 to get a feel for the kind of information that can be gleaned from the pages. Not only does he give a run down of the historic style; he also gives a run down of the present day commercial beers ingredient usage as well as the second round winners of the National Homebrew Competition winner ingredient usage from the late 90s or early 2000s.

 

[frankstoneline]

The majority of these crystal-based suggestions are to prevent an overly sweet/high finishing gravity, most often applied to ipa's, as was mentioned before, too much crystal is pretty apparent in an ipa (that is if you are like me and like em bone dry)

 

[cmoewes]

All good advice. I'd like to add that 1-gallon pilot batches are fun for experimenting with malts... don't expect them to ferment the same way as the full batch size, though! They will have different yeast flavors.

Even if you calculate and pitch your yeast at the same rate as with 5 gallons?

 

[cluckk]

A great place to look is the website of the maltster. They usually have spec sheets or charts showing what to expect from each. Here is the chart from Murphy & Son's.

 

[ram5ey]

Another vote for Designing Great Beers.

 

[Yooper]

I think that brewing is like cooking.

Making a great spaghetti, for example, usually requires things like garlic and oregano. Most people would use those items, and make a good spaghetti sauce. It would be very odd to use curry powder in the sauce, but maybe someone would for something different. The same is true for brewing. There are certain ingredients that make sense in certain beer styles, while other ingredients would be an odd fit.

Learning that is a mixture of experience and reading about ingredients. Some brewers like to wildly experiment, because they can. I'm much more traditional and mainstream and usually stick with ingredients that make sense.

I like Designed Great Beers, although it's a bit outdated now. (Ray says he's working on the a new version, but I don't know any info about it). I also think things like reading our recipe database is helpful. Even though the recipes are different, most stouts have a similar percentage of roasted malt, while most American pale ales have similar percentages of crystal malts. There is a reason for that as most beers taste best with a certain balance of flavors.

Back to the spaghetti analogy, the sauce might be 90% tomato sauce, 5% onions and garlic, and 5% other spices. It would be beyond weird to have a spaghetti sauce that's only 25% tomato sauce. The same is true with a beer like an APA. Generally, it'd be 90% base malt, and 5-10% crystal at a max. While there might be variations, that would be a rule a thumb. Some of that comes just from reading and learning about the flavors and colors, and some of it comes from trial and error, just like cooking.

And just like with cooking, following the recipe the first time and tweaking it later to be perfect is generally the way I brew.

 

[chickypad]

I have Designing great beers as well but as mentioned it's a bit dated and doesn't include all the recognized styles. I find myself more often referring to Brewing Classic Styles for recipes. Jamil also has been doing the style profile in BYO for a while, if you don't get the magazine a number of those can be found online. He goes into some detail about what grains to use and why, as well as all the other elements that make the style. A Yooper alluded to, there is no reason you need to be limited to style guidelines (unless entering competion), but I do think learning the recognized styles helps as a base for making your own recipes. Brewing to a style also means you can find some commercial examples to compare with.

 

[Oginme]

Another vote for Designing Great Beers by Daniels. The first half of the book was great for getting an understanding of malts, hops, yeasts and flavors. Another tool that helped me greatly in understanding which flavors are best with a particular style is the Style Presentation pdf which can be found at bjcp.org. It gives a breakdown of flavors which are expected for each style and those flavors which are not to be found (just as helpful).

 

[stpug]

One key difference of Designing Great Beers and Brewing Classic Styles is that Designing Great Beers focuses on the history of the beer style and historic creation of the beers, followed by a synopsis of what brewers of circa 2000 are doing to create beers of that style. It leaves out personal opinion, and focuses on historic literature and "modern day" recipe formulations WITHOUT actually giving you a recipe.

While Brewing Classic Styles gives a quick synopsis of a beer style, it is very much influenced by Jamil's personal opinion and brewing preferences followed by an actual recipe formulated by Jamil. After listening and reading a lot of Jamil delivers, I recognize that he has specific assumption and preferences that differ from classic brewing practices. This isn't a bad thing, just something I'm aware of when reading/listening to Jamil - I take his recommendations with plenty of salt. I like BCS on the whole and it complements DGB very well, but if I had to recommend one book to buy it would be DGB (followed by Brew Like a Monk since DGB doesn't touch on Belgian beers).

The two books take a difference approach at presenting stylistic traits of various beers. One gives you a detailed breakdown of a beer style leaving it up to you to "go forth and formulate a recipe" while the other gives you a quick synopsis of a beer style followed by a recipe from the author. I am more favorable to historic description followed by the thought process of formulating my own recipe than I am being given a recipe to try.

Aside from that, in regard to DGB being outdated, when we're talking about classic beer styles and giving the historic background of them it's never outdated - it's exactly how it was done historically speaking. Even the commercial and homebrew ingredient breakdown is still very relevant to today's brewing practices. While Part 1 of the book is definitely long-in-the-tooth, it gives a nice breakdown of how a modern brewing software calculates the values it does. It was worth reading once through to get an idea, but it's Part 2 where the book becomes invaluable. The only aspect of Part 2 that is a bit dated would be the hop selection presented for most American styles since many were not available when the book was written (i.e. amarillo, citra, simcoe, etc, etc); however the hop selection for most european beer styles remains relevant today.

 

[cmoewes]

I think that brewing is like cooking.

Making a great spaghetti, for example, usually requires things like garlic and oregano. Most people would use those items, and make a good spaghetti sauce. It would be very odd to use curry powder in the sauce, but maybe someone would for something different. The same is true for brewing. There are certain ingredients that make sense in certain beer styles, while other ingredients would be an odd fit.
...
And just like with cooking, following the recipe the first time and tweaking it later to be perfect is generally the way I brew.

I really love that analogy. That actually make so much sense, I don't know why it never occurred to me.