Xoxon said:
Both good points, particularly about the yeast.
Maybe I could phrase the question more productively like "I'm wanting to achieve a full malt spectrum and learn how to balance a grain bill of non crystal kilned malts".
Humour me. For the sake of the excercise, pretend you have to brew a clean simple malty beer, what proportions would you use?
My starting point was;
50% JW Ale Malt
35% Vienna Malt
10% Munich Malt
5% Melanoidan Malt
All this talk of all Munich beers has me thinking;
70% Vienna Malt
25% Munich Malt
5% Melanoidan Malt
Can anyone speak to the relative flavour power of these three malts?
The aim of the game here is to get them to taste each of them in balance.
Blending the darker kilned base malts wont really give you a defining flavour experience of each malt in the finnished beer.
Best bet would be to brew a couple of smaller volume beers, say 10 Liters, with 100% vienna and 100% munich malt. Split the yeast between the 2 batches.
Vienna malt is similar to pilsner with a slightly sweet honey nutty malt character and will give you a nice deep saturated golden beer.
Munich is more intense, with the flavour character tending towards sweet buiscits and toasty bread. The beer will also have a nice orange hue.
Munich 2 is quite intense when used in large quantities, and has the same flavours and Munich 1, just deeper and stronger.
I'm personally not a big fan of Melanoiden. I think it has its place as something you use for a hit of munich malt type character when your not using munich malts, as aposed to being used in conjunction with them.
All of these malts are base malts and can be used as such. I see recipes where people add 3 or 5% munich malt like its a specialty malt, and realisticly it will add next to nothing to complexity but another line in the recipe. Munich 2 is a bit of an exception, and i have always tried to keep its use limited to about 50%, mixed with Pils and vienna in beers like Munich Dunkel or Altbier. Too much and it becomes tiring to drink.
I made a Saison about 12 months ago with Weyerman vienna as the base and used BSaaz and it was one of the best beers i have ever made.......... devine!
Another tip on something i have found, is that 100% munich malt beers tend to be a bit one dimentional and boring for some reason. Hence why you usually see some Pilsner and maybe caramunich or my favorite... carabohemian mixed in for complexity and ballance without taking away from the munich character.
cheers
Edit........ to try siomething left field, use vienna or munich malt as the base malt in a big porter or stout if you want a nice firm chewey background maltiness without having to overcrowd it with crystal malts.