Black malt substitute

[ajmuzza]

I'm looking at doing a vanilla choc porter. Lot of the recipes seem to call for black malt which I can't get. Would roasted barley sub ( yeah I know there'll be a colour difference). Also, what happens if you mash the dark malts (ie the black) at the start rather than in the last 10 minutes as some recipes recommend.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Black malt is different to RB. Its almost like charcoal. Nothing wrong with mashing dark malt at the start. Many brewers do it this way.

You could try making your own black malt in your oven. Just use some pale malt on some oven trays and turn the oven up high and raost it till it goes black.

 

[major_mitt]

What about Weyermann Carafa Special II? I've got a porter mashing right now with 300g of that and 80g of roast barley

 

[nathanvonbeerenstein]

I had the same problem, but CraftBrewer have it at a good price online, and for the amounts that most recipe's call for, which is usually less than 100 grams, postage shouldnt be too much anyway.
I got the 5kg satchel and padded out the postage costs by buying spec grains for a few recipes and other assorted stuff like DME and yeast.
I found that black malt had a pretty unique character compared to similar ones
Just my 2c

 

[warra48]

Personally I never use Black Malt or Roasted Barley in a Porter.
To me, it doesn't belong in there, being more appropriate for Stouts.
I use about 8 to 10% Brown Malt and 4 to 5% Chocolate Malt or Chocolate Wheat Malt.
It gives me plenty of colour and coffee chocolate flavour notes, but without the roasted notes which I think are more Stout specific.

However. don't let me stop you brewing anything you want.

 

[real_beer]

http://www.kotmf.com/articles/maltnames.php

Same thing but might be easier to read: http://www.brew.is/files/malt.html