Crystal Wheat

[Snow]

My local HBS is now stocking Crystal Wheat. Anybody tried this? What did you reckon? I'm thinking of using about 300g in my next APA.

Cheers - Snow

 

[Doc]

Snow,

I use TF Crystal Wheat in my JS Strong Ale clone. I use 350 gr in a 23 litre batch.
I have also just used it in my 100% Wheat Porter that is in secondary. Haven't done the final taste tests on it yet to see how much 440gr is noticable. Although I used a significant amount of Chocolate Wheat in that brew too.

Will it be the only Crystal malt in your APA ?

Have a taste of a few grains. It tastes great.

Beers,
Doc

 

[jayse]

Hi Snow,
I used crystal wheat as the whole crystal malt addition in a APA and found it was very mild as compared to ussuall crystal malts of the same colour, also i didn't think the colour come through in the beer as much as expect or calculated at.
Its a great malt though i think but much milder than what you may expect it to be.
Those are my first thoughts anyway.
Your 300g sounds about spot on to me.

enjoy
Jayse

 

[Snow]

Excellent, thanks guys. It will be my only crystal addition, and I'll have 1kg of Munich with the rest JWM Pale Ale.

We'll see how it goes.....

- Snow.

 

[Snow]

Well I brewed the APA last night and I gotta say, the crystal wheat was a lot darker than I expected. I think I've made and amber ale instead. Oh well, should be nice either way!

- Snow.

 

[jayse]

Hi snow,

thats sounds like the opposite of what i expected after my few goes with it, either way i think it will be within the colour range.
Problem is if your want to send it out into a competion even though 20ebc is well within the guidelines for APA, 'some' judges preconceived ideas of 'pale' are very pale.I don't think any loss of points is called for when clearly the colour is within the guidelines for that beer. I bet it would be still below the max 22ebc quoted for APA.
Eitherway in most comps it will ussually only be one lesser judge who would mark down points and the rest of the judges would pull him into line or throw his or her scores out.
Thats my theory anyway but honestly i don't have much of a clue :blink: .
Hope it comes up a treat, i made a APA yesterday too, today iam brewing up a mild.

Jayse

 

[Snow]

Yeah I was quite surprised, but really, I don't worry that much about colour, except if I'm doing a wit or an Irish Red, where the colour really adds to the drinking experience. FWIW, I use Qbrew as my software and it estimates the colour as 11 SRM. I don't know what that is in EBC, but it appears to be at the very top of the range for APAs (4-11 SRM). I know what you mean about the judges, though. A couple of years back my APA got caned by the judges in the Qld comp for being too dark, but when I checked, it was easily in the BJCP guidelines.

- Snow