Victory malt?

[Martin Bridges]

Hi folks,

I did a bit of work yesterday (while my wort was boiling) on mapping out my brew schedule for the next few months. A couple of the recipes I'd like to do include Victory malt. As far as I can tell none of the suppliers over here stock Victory, or the most obvious substitute (Biscuit). According to the Weyerman's website they suggest that Melanoidin malt can be a substitute for Victory, and I know that Liberty have some Melanoidin.

So I believe I have 2 options:
- substitute with Melanoidin
- toast some of my own malt

Has anybody tried either of the above, and if so what would you recommend?

Cheers,

Martin

[JoKing]

I use melanoidin malt as a substitute for "Belgian Aromatic". I just used it in the weekend for the Dubbel that I brewed. It is good in beers that require a "Malty" taste - like Red ales, and such the like. The flavour is like Munich on Steroids. I believe if you want the "Buscuity" flavour out of your malt, the substitute for American Victory would be Weyermann Amber Malt. I've tried it as a sub for "Buscuit Malt" and it is indeed quite buscuitty @ around 4% of your grist. There is also Bairds Amber Malt - but I cant speak for this, as I've not tried it... it may be completely different.

[denimglen]

Is the Weyermann malt you refer to CaraAmber? Or something different?

[JoKing]

Yes - CaraAmber... and it's not caramelised either, just straight subtle buscuit (@5% of the grist).

[denimglen]

Choice.

Next beer coming up is a AAA, kinda verging on IPA, and calls for a good hunk of victory so will swap it out for caraamber and hope for the best.

[JoKing]

Should be a straight exchange at 25 - 30L in colour.

[denimglen]

I'm in the same situation as you bud. Seeing a lot of stuff I wanna brew using Victory (and crystal 60 to for that matter) but none to be found.

Take this advice with a grain of salt but I'll let you know my thoughts I guess.

I have toasted my own malt, it works, but I found it was easy to over-toast. It got to a point where I thought it was done (and it was) so I let it go a few minutes more to 'be on the safe side'. Bad move, got a little too much of that sorta raisin, fruit-cake kinda buzz you get from a darker roast. Also, liking to be as consistent as possible I don't feel I would be able to get a consistent batch of malt from toast to toast. I'd rather leave that up to the maltster.

As far as I know victory and amber are made in the same way but amber is kilned to ~50L vs victory's ~28L. Half the amount to get the same thing? I dunno, maybe, maybe not.

Cara-amber. Contrary to what the name suggests I read this is actually a toasted malt not a crystal malt. I haven't had time to mess around with it yet to find out the honest truth though.

[Alasdair]

I've used amber as a straight swap for victory in a couple of recipes - an APA and a English Brown. They've both been quite toasty - more successful in the Brown ale, and probably too malty for style in the APA, but still tasty in both. I've got some caraamber now so I'm keen to repeat both recipes with that instead.

So I'd try caraamber as a straight swap, or half to two-thirds amber as substitutes.

[Reviled]

Bumping this - So why does Weyermann called Caraamber 'cara' if its not a caramel malt? Same goes with Carared etc, they all just seem like various coloured crystals to me??

Doesnt cara mean crystal?

[James P]

Trademarked brand names I believed. Anyone can use Caramel malt, but caraamber is a brand name.. IIRC.

Yep google found CARAAMBER® (The R is for registered trademark)

[Reviled]

But the website has a tab - caramel malts, you click on it, and it brings everything, including CaraAmber up, indicating that it is in fact a crystal malt!

[James P]

It seems everyone else on the web refers to Caraamber as a crystal....

[Reviled]

Exactly, come on Jo and Glen, fess up, whered you get the info that its not a crystal malt??