Jayse & Guest Lurker
I ended up contacting Muntons themsleves.
To my surprise, they told me that the smugglers ale kits are:
72% Base Pearl Malt
27% Crystal Malt
The hops are:
Progress, Golding & Styrian hop pellets.
Looking forward to buying the ingredients and having a go! :icon_cheers:
Bulmershe
Hmm, can't find the scratches head emoticon.
It was cool of them to reply but still it only raises more questions really as others have said.
As is I wouldn't be going and brewing it like that unless you could possibly try and get even more info out of them on what the actuall crystal malt portion is. Is it all one type of crystal malt and what crystal malt is it? colour in EBC would be cool. But the exact name of it and maltings its from etc would be handy. Basically what the hell is that crystal malt your using in such a huge amount?
From what Guest lurker said about it being irish red like I'd still be looking at only 10% max of a standard 140 odd ebc crystal malt.
That much 40 ebc crystal malt does put it in the right colour range but still to me is a hell of a lot. That gives a beer of around 22EBC.
Theres was a aussie malt I used once JWM cara maybe it was but it was around 50EBC and if you used that rubbish at 27% i can tell you the snails would be the only ones who would go near it.
One malt in the colour range that i might think would almost work would be carared from weyerman but still 27% is just not adding up.
It must be some really good crystal malt, remembering colour isn't everything ie the JWM in the same colour range as the carared is cloying and horrible but carared is totally different and lovely. What I'am getting at is your gunna need the exact crystal malt there to beable to use it at that huge amount. You can't just say well its a 40 ebc crystal I'll just chuck this stuff that is also 40 EBC in it.
So a bit more research needed before I'd go and put that recipe down with just what ever crystal malt the local home brew store has.
Ooh thats a lot of crystal
make sure you only use pale or medium.
Yeap though I don't think its just a case of the colour. It has to be a lighter colour one of course but it also has to be a really really good one aswell. The JWM one in that colour range is the worst tasting stuff imaginable so its not really a simple case of just finding whatever the brewshop has in that colour range to beable to use in such a crazy amount.
You could halve that amount of crystal and probably still be around the style of beer you're after.
Yeap worth looking at finding a more traditional way of doing it with the malts available rather than just following the recipe to the letter when there too many questions unanswered.
Wow that was nice of them, but as noted, 27% of 140 EBC crystal would be undrinkable, I am guessing they are using some king of light crystal at around 40 EBC.
I think everyones in agreeance(<you can check the spelling of that word if you like :lol: ) here. Pretty well just be far warned we don't think you should go straight out and brew that puppy just yet as the recipe is written there bulmershe.
Sorry for the ranting just don't want to see anyone blindy going out and brewing that recipe with some crystal malts that just arn't meant to be used like that.
If muntons do follow up more than that would be awesome. I was suprised you got that much so see how much more you can eek out of them, maybe even point them to this discussion if they are really interested.
Cheers
Jayse
