Crystal vs. Cara malts

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Sorry guys. I made a small miscalculation. I'm using 700g cara and 700g medium crystal so the 35% becomes more something like 22% because cara is so light. Keep you posted on the outcome anyway

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Aha. Now I'm getting it. Just half way through bottling this latest brew which is a hoppy pale, mostly pale malt with 700g cara malt to an og of 1.047 and the TASTE is there. That beautiful caramelly chewiness. Nice. The colour however is a pretty boring brown/murky gold. Pretty uninspiring

I'm going to guess for now that the 700g additional medium crystal on top of the 700g cara next batch will bring the deep amber colour and some thick, almost roasty flavours. So looking forward to it!

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Mine

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

My aspiration (Pirate Life pale ale)

 

[MHB]

You could get darker than that with a 5% addition of a dark crystal, I really think your crystal additions should be less than 10% and less than 5% in most beers, but its your beer not mine...
If you find the beer too sweet, you will know for next time.
Mark

 

[Jack of all biers]

Mine

Mate, some of the light colour you have in your bottle is from the yeast in suspension, which is predominantly white/cream colour. Not that the beer will darken once the yeast settles out, but it can be a bit of an optical illusion with the white particles floating about.

Totally agree with MHB re the % of crystal malts. I will add that you have not stated what base malts you are using? Remember it's not all about the speciality malts and some base malts will add a nice colour without any speciality malts at all. For example if you used Vienna, you would need to tone back the amount or colour of the crystal (if you were only looking at the colour of the beer). If you can't get the caramel chewiness or colour you want without going over 10% crystal/caramalt, I'd suggest you try some different brands or types of malts to see if other Maltsters produce a malt more to your flavour. eg if you use Pilsner malt, try some Maris Otter as your base. You'll get a darker colour and more malty profile.

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Thanks for the advice fellas. It states on a Pirate life can 'ale malt, cara malt, crystal malt' that's what I'm using to achieve the same lovibond. Like I said, I'll keep you posted

I've received plenty of bad advice about brewing from all sorts of 'great' brew minds in the past and unfortunately had to discover many things on my own that people were telling me should be fine but I was getting mediocre results so I'm naturally into experimenting myself with the knowledge I have. It's definitely been the winning ingredient in the past

By the way, my beers darken as they clear

 

[manticle]

Don't forget, there's multiple ale, crystal and cara.

Brewing is very much about trying things out and tweaking according to results.

 

[Jack of all biers]

By the way, my beers darken as they clear

That's the optical illusion. The white coloured particles drop to the bottom and aren't reflecting as much light back into your eyes. The beer doesn't actually darken though.

And yes you have to brew to the way you think best and learn by experimenting, that's for sure.

 

[manticle]

Sure. Here it is
www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=9465.0

Unless I'm missing something, that forum post doesn't describe what was actually tried. Link within, purportedly to the experiment was unfortunately broken. What and how did they test?

 

[Mardoo]

Actually, my first beer I brewed was 35% crystal. It wasn't overtly sweet, but the body was chewy as…something really chewy. A pint felt like a meal. I'd guess that a huge portion of that was the dextrins, but that's a guess.

 

[Rocker1986]

I always thought crystal and cara (caramel) malts were pretty much the same, just two different names.

 

[Adr_0]

Why Yes. Yes I am

Joe White Caramalt is, while useful, not particularly inspiring. But it depends what you want.

I can't remember much about the PLIPA malt profile when I had it in Brisbane, but it looks like your photo is pretty dark.

Do you have any brew software? It might be worth aiming for EBC 22-26 and see if you like that.

I'm not sure which malts they would use, but the term 'medium crystal' is about as broad as it gets. Gladfield medium crystal might be a good option.

If you're after interesting crystals Manticle has listed some and I would also throw Thomas Fawcett pale crystal in there.

Some like Cara-amber you would use 8-15% while Cara-red might be as much as 20%. Most will be best in the 3-7% range though, particularly the darker ones: dark crystal (choose your brand...), Special B, Cara-aroma, Cara-bohemian.

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Well I decided on an ebc of 29 (I used a color chart to estimate best I could to the colour of a Pirate pale, knowing the basic ingredients, unless only small anounts of dark crystal are used, time will tell) and we'll see how she tastes in a few weeks. I've just ordered some dark crystal too to trial in smaller amounts. Cara is basically very light crystal Rocker. I believe anywhere between 20 and about 60 ebc brand dependant (mine was 40) and looks a good shade lighter than the medium crystal too, as it should. OG: 1.047. Bang on Beersmith figures with 4kg pale malt, 1.7kg mixed cara and crystal malts so they're very convertible. Probably more so than nany might assume. Apparently I can expect a standard fg of 1.012. If so, meaning that there's less reason to assume crystal a 'sweet' malt for non fermentable reason. It would be the particular roast we taste and perceive as 'sweet' but I will update

Well the wort is now complete, here is a sample glass I tried to get in a similar light but it's a bit overcast here today but I'm happy with my ebc calcs here. Tastes very promising in the early stage. Keep you posted (Pictured real deal Pirate and my attempt)

 

[manticle]

The question is not whether or not they are 'convertible'. There's no doubt the sugars within most crystal malts (already converted in the malting process) will contribute to OG.

There are different types of 'sugar' - some more easily digested by beer yeast than others. IF you steep crystal, in the absence of enzyme containing base malt, the majority of dextrins within (dextrins are a type of longer chain sugar) will not get digested by yeast and therefore add to body and some sweetness. Different crystal types will also add melanoiden, dried fruit, toffee and even roast type flavours in varying amounts. If you mash crystal with high lintner malts, it stands to reason at least some of that dextrin can get broken down into shorter chain, more fermentable sugars. The higher the crystal percentage within the grist, the more surplus enzymes would be needed for breaking those chains down.

Crystal malts contain negligible enzymes and negligible starch.

 

[Rocker1986]

I'll be interested to see if the FG does get down to 1.012 with that much crystal malt in the recipe. I usually use about 5-6% medium crystal in my pale ales and end up at around that FG with a nice background sweetness under the hops. I'm not sure there's any need to use 35% of it, color can be adjusted with small amounts of roasted grains without affecting the flavor, but it's your beer after all.

All the Weyermann crystal malts are prefixed cara-, even the dark ones like Caraaroma (which is a ******* beautiful malt by the way)... they can be light or dark. Caramalt itself is a trade name, but there isn't much, if any difference between Caramalt and lighter crystal malts. They're pretty much exactly the same thing, just with different names.

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Dear diary, it turns out the brew dudes at AHB DO know wtf they're talking about! Who would've guessed. I was sure a complete novice like myself knew more than they, whaddya know

Interesting prelude, right? How have I come to this sudden conclusion? Well, I'm glad you asked. Sit right down, grab a home brew and make yourself comfy, would you?

So my crazy crystal brew is almost at FG, a point or two to go and preliminary tasting yields a suprising result so far, being, it kinda tastes a little bit like stout.. yea, it does a bit. It's too early to tell for sure but it's reminiscent of stout.

Now, second interesting development is, Pirate Life finally wrote back to my email! Yep, out of the unexpected I logged on and whoomp, there it was. They didn't F-around and wanted to get straight to the point.

The brewer talked about preference of water additions, or should I say water preference, which was high in sulphates ('of course' he added; like you'd have to be severely mentally incapacitated if you did not pick this)

he added, chloride levels are also 'healthy' to ensure malt backbone is present. He spoke about mash temps and being different for each grain type (they have intelligent instrumentation which tells them how the mash is performing for each grain) US-05 or WLP-001 for yeast. 21 degrees fermentation temp, cooling, racking off the yeast cake, dry hopping for 2 days (3 max) and taste testing (if hop presence hasn't eventuated as expected action is taken with further dry hopping) mostly late hopping in the kettle (just 10ibu from 60 minute addition) that's the basic gist of their brewing technique

Malts. Yes, now this is where things become interesting for me. We remember seeing the actual PL pale ale pictured earlier vs my attempt, right? well a mate decided to rock around this arvo with a 6 pack of Pirates. I was really keen to put one straight from the ice into a clean schooner because I'd basically received the ingredients email just a couple hours prior. Straight away I notice something very different. The latest sample is a completely different colour.. (pictured) Wow, I think to myself, what's the go?! It's much hoppier than my previous sample also, which leads me to the malt bill. Pirate life tell me they use 91% Aussie ale malt (but other types such as Marris Otter, or Golden Promise will do too. 5.5% Carahell/caramalt and 3.5% medium crystal, along with (wait for it) 'sometimes' Carafa III in 'small' amounts. Which may help explain the sample I attempted to emulate. I'm suprised how much these guys seem to experiment, in a good way

After all this, today I noted (with the golden pale ale) that my regular pale ale's are very close to this already, bar the incredible hop aroma. They apparently only dry hop at 6g per litre while I use twice the amount..

So, that's my interesting news, will keep you updated (I still have one can of that really dark and malty pale ale to trial against mine in a couple weeks)

 

[manticle]

Good luck. Learning this shit (and how it relates to what your desired results are) is more than half the fun and should never stop. Brewing is a universe.

 

[laxation]

Have you come across this recipe? I tried it for a mate's birthday and thought it was damn close...

https://club.coopers.com.au/coopers-forum/topic/16722/

 

[Doctormcbrewdle]

Well, it's crash chill time. Been fermenting for 8 days now at 19. Today's sample is actually really promising. All stout tastes seem to have disappeared but time will tell

FG:1.013 (ish) but it usually drops a further point or two once Co2 dissipates, it was only drawn 5 minutes prior so will leave it on the bench and see what happens