What are you brewing?

[nzbrewer]

Since this is the most popular thread on the RealBeer.co.nz forum I thought I would start it here just to see what happens

[Reviled]

CaraAmber adds a bit of colour, but most of it will be coming from the pale choc in that recipe..

"What is the aim when mixing light and dark crystal malts"

Complexity mate ;o) lol, some people will probably say that it doesnt do much, myself, I at least think I can notice the difference, you get different flavours from different malts, and if you combine malts you can get a different flavour again, or simply a combination of the two individual flavours, adding to the complexity of the malt character...

A good way to get an idea of what flavours your malt gives you is to chew on some malted grains, throw a handful in your mouth and think of what flavours you get, alot of the time they come across in the brew - for example when you chew on CaraAmber it tastes really toasty with biscuity notes (IMO), and I for one can notice it in the finished product

Does that make sense?

[denimglen]

Complexity mate ;o) lol, some people will probably say that it doesnt do much, myself, I at least think I can notice the difference, you get different flavours from different malts, and if you combine malts you can get a different flavour again, or simply a combination of the two individual flavours, adding to the complexity of the malt character...

Yup. As an extreme example:

Caramalt, about 35EBC, will give mostly sweetness and some medium-light caramel notes.

Dark Crystal, about 240EBC, will give a little sweetness, some burnt caramel, and sometimes some raisin-y dark fruit notes.

200g of Dark Crystal in a 20L batch will give you about 16EBC of colour, where as it would take like 1.4kg of Caramalt to get the same amount of colour, but you can imagine the massive difference in flavour.

If you mixed in both in theory you'd get a bit of a mash up of light caramel sweetness and some dark fruit/raisin notes.

A good way to get an idea of what flavours your malt gives you is to chew on some malted grains, throw a handful in your mouth and think of what flavours you get

I know this works for lots of people but not for me. I see where you're coming from, I can tastes the difference but I just hate all that husky shit in my mouth haha.

Does CaraAmber add much in the way of colour? Or is it the combination of Munich and Pale Choc that makes it amber?

All the grains in a beer give it some degree of colour, including the base malt. The majority of the colour in that amber ale comes from the dark crystal though. The pale choc is a small part of the grist and while it slightly tweaks the colour it also adds a nice little toasty kick to the beer.

Caramber has a little too much caramel character (for this beer) I reckon, as an update to that recipe I posted I think you'd be better off using Dingemans Biscuit malt, which is more inline with the original recipe anyway.

If you have to go buy grain I'd suggest grabbing another hop (preferably another 'C' hop or amarillo or simcoe) to go with the Cascade, just to spice things up. That beer is quite complex on the malt side of things and a single variety of hop can be a little one dimensional. I'd also drop the IBUs a bit if you're using Green Bullet, going by it's numbers (high cohumulone) the bitterness may come up a little too sharp. So maybe drop it down to 50 - 55 IBU depending on your tastes.

Hope that helps.

[Patrick]

Awesome guys, thanks for all the advice. Will place my order tomorrow!

[Andrew]

If you stand back and look at it, its pretty straight forward too. If a malt looks a little "toasty" it'll give a small amount of color and the darker it is the more colour it will give right up to something like a black malt or roasted that will give lots of colour and you need only use smaller amounts of these to get the colour increase.
Rev is spot on with what he says regarding maly complexity and flavours

[Andrew]

And I thought my set-up was pre-historic:

[Andrew]

why do hyperlinks never feckin work. Bollocks:
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/community/pimp-my-syste...

[jt]

If I brew, it's tomorrow and it's the late hopped NZ Draught

1.035 of Malturop with a healthy whack of caramalt and lashings of Motueka, Cascade and Hallertau

[jt]

No brew today and all fermenters empty. Kegged/ Bottled the Wild Mild last night to empty the last one.
Roast pumpkin soup in the HLT - aka the warehouse pot

cheers, jt

[Matthew]

Complete and utter change of plans...

Was brewing a Saison tomorrow but can't get my head space out of a hoppy infinite loop. On top of that there was a sneaky bottle of His Majesty 2009 that got cracked at the Malthouse this arvo and sent my senses into overdrive.

An ode to the Majesty

Malturop/Kolsch mix
Caramalt
Munich
Special B & Aromatic (might as well use it, there's only a few gms)
Pacific Jade & 60
Williamette, Chinook, sprinkle of Amarillo & Cascade @ 20
Williamette, Chinook @ 10
US05

[Stu McKinlay]

I guess you liked it... always worried about how a beer will age, especially hand bottled ones (and it was only 6.4%) but I tried it 6 weeks ago at my wedding and it was bloody outstanding. I suppose it is about time to post the recipe...

[jt]

He's brewing it today chap, give him a pointer or two ?

[Matthew]

All Mashed in. I've had a good outline of the recipe for a while but this is no clone. Call it inspired by the Royal, could be more a Jester though...