Crystal Malts at Brewers Coop

[DP]

All this time I've been wondering why my beers have been coming out darker than I expected when I use crystal malts. I'd been making some wrong assumptions about how 'pale', 'medium' and 'dark' corresponded to the default crystals available in Beer Smith.

I just phoned Mike and got the numbers and thought I'd publish them here in case anyone else was making the same mistake as me.

 

Pale Crystal 90-110 EBC (currenly 110 = 55 SRM)

Medium Crystal 140-160 EBC (currently 147 = 75 SRM)

Dark Crystal 220-260 EBC (currently 255 = 130 SRM)

[Matt Smith]

Cheers for this ! I have been wondering the same thing

Regarding the conversion, I always thought the formula for EBC - SRM was: EBC x .375 + .56, which would make:

Pale: 41.81 SRM
Medium: 55.68 SRM
Dark: 96.18 SRM

I did a quick google search and it seems there is about three different formulas around and not much consensus about which one is correct. Anybody know what the deal is ?

[DP]

(I presume you meant 0.46 instead of 0.56)

Quite right. I've just done some searching on the Internet and the majority of the calcs say EBC x 0.375 + 0.46 which gives quite different figures to the calc that I have on my phone. Good catch, thanks for that. I'll amend the OP but if anyone knows for sure what the formula should be, please let us know.

[DP]

Hmm, Wikipedia has the conversion as EBC x 0.508 which must be what my phone app was using. I wonder what is right?

[*edit*] Beer Smith seems to use this conversion too. So does Ray Daniels' Designing Great Beers

[DP]

OK, going by the consensus of Wikipedia, Beer Smith, Ray Daniels' book Designing Great Beers and Papazian's The Complete Joy of Home Brewing it seems that SRM = EBC x 0.508 and that EBC = SRM x 1.97 (or, that SRM is near enough to half EBC). I'll leave the numbers as they are.

[Druid]

Palmer quotes the same ie. EBC = SRM x 1.97.

 

According to the same passage, apparently the EBC scale had been evolving and some malt manufacturers had not yet moved to using the newer EBC scale - whether that is the reason for the varying calcs, I'm not sure.

[James Lawson]

Thanks, I've been wondering about this for a while. I'm not the hugest fan of that Bairds Medium Crystal...