Substituting Jw Ale For Pilsner Malt In Lager

[Tickstar]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone's tried substituting Ale malt for Pilsner malt in a lager before? I'm about to buy a 12.5kg bag of JW Trad Ale and would like to make a lager as one of the 3 AG beers I'll get from the bag. Should I go for it or wait until I get some Pilsner malt?

Thanks for your help.

 

[crozdog]

i've used JW ale in pils & Pils in an Ale. go for it.

 

[SJW]

If u have the option why would you by JW anyway? Ale,Pils not much diff, ale's just a little darker, considering a lot of blokes go the the trouble of buying Pilsner malt or even the Weyermanns extra pale pilsner malt and then add heaps of crystal and sark grain anyway. I use BB Ale malt for all ales and Lagers and just save the Pilsners malt for 100% Pilsners or Lagers with Rice in the mash.
But thats just me :wacko:

Steve

 

[drsmurto]

I use Wey Pils for just about everything these days, i am fast running out of the stuff whilst my bag of BB ale gets used only sparingly...........

 

[SJW]

I use Wey Pils for just about everything these days, i am fast running out of the stuff whilst my bag of BB ale gets used only sparingly...........

Thats great malt too. The beeauty of using Pils malt for everything is that you can use it for everything. I guess the point I am making is that there is no real need to have bags of pils and Ale malt laying around or at least there is no need to stress if you run out of either.

 

[kabooby]

Did this a few months ago in my Munich lager. Mine was a mixture of JW ale and munich malt. The result :chug:

 

[Tickstar]

Thanks for all the replies

I went ahead and bought the 12.5 kg bag of JW Trad Ale. Am in the process of making an Amarillo Ale (waiting for boil to start). Tomorrow will be a roggenbier and saturday will do the lager and NC cube until the ferment fridge is free. Don't normally brew this often but the missus is due to deliver our first child in 2 weeks so I'm trying to build up the reserves in the likely event I'll be too slepp deprived to brew for a while :lol:

 

[Duff]

I'll throw a spanner in.

I posted this link some time ago when I was mistaken for grain.

JW Ale does not work for a Pilsner. IMO, of course.

Cheers.

 

[kabooby]

I actually read that thread Duff when I was looking to do mine. Did you end up finding out why the colour was darker.

JW Trad ale is 5.9 EBC
JW Exp pils is 3.2 EBC

If anything using the ale may make your beer a little bit darker, but not much.

The beer I did came out about 12 EBC but that was due to the munich malt

Kabooby

 

[dr K]

It is important to remember that the domestic malts, variously called, Pale, Ale and Pilsener are very much the same, they certainly all use the same base grain (whether it be Gardner, Galaxy, Sloop, Schooner, Franklin, Arapils or whatever blend of these and other varities). One would expect that an ale malt is kilned at a marginally higher temperature but apart from a minor colour variance and lower levels of DMS precursors in an "ale" malt they are reasonably interchangeable, an ale derives its traditional redish hue not from the base malt but the xtal or even sometimes a tad of roast (combined with xtal).
Munich, xtal and such are produced using very different processes to the standard base malts, although Munich both light and dark can be used at 100%, the result is..interesting..but not entirely unpleasant.

K

 

[milpod]

I tend to weyermans for my special brews,where ibu's are light.

If constructing an apa.cpa,ipa where ibu's are bigger i'll go with powells.(cheap).

Not fussed with srm,close enough is good enough