Victory Malt & Oktoberfest Hops

[SJW]

As we are in the middle of Lager season i have turned into a brewing machine. I am going to to the Bock tomorrow along with an Oktoberfest. With the Oktoberfest the American recipe calls for 250g of Victory Grain. All my Local HBS's dont have Victory grain and i was wondering what would be a good substitute? The rest of the recipe looks like this for 23 L:

3kg pale liquid extract
1kg Pale malt grain
450g Caramel/crystal 60L
250g Victory ?

Now for hops i was going to use 30g of Norther brewer 9.8% 60 min boil & 30g of Hallertauer 2.5% 15min boil.

Please confirm the Victory = & are those hops typical for Oktoberfest?

ps. this is what Beersmith says about Victory:

A toasted malt that adds biscuit or toasted flavor to a beer.

 

[wessmith]

Victory malt is a registered brand name of Breiss Malting in the US. It is an Amber style of malt giving biscuity flavours and aromas and at 28 Lovibond (75 EBC) ia about halfway between Joe White Amber at 45 EBC and TF Amber at 100 EBC. Use either and adjust for colour.

Wes.

 

[Snow]

Dark Munich malt goes well in an octoberfest. I would also replace your crystal malt with Caramunich, and also add a bit of melanoidin (150g) to bring out the maltiness in replace of a decoction mash. Those hope you have chosen are good for this type of beer, though I would add 10g hallertauer at flameout...but that's just me

What yeast are you using?

Cheers - Snow

 

[wessmith]

Snow, Caramunich IS crystal malt. Once again the difference is merely one manufacturers trade name for the same process. Agree with the dark munich additions but would not MIX with extra melnoidin - I would replace some of the dark munich. Octoberfest beers are quite subtle in reality and too much maltiness will need extra hopping to balance and take you out of that "subtle" zone.

Wes

 

[Snow]

Hang on Wes, I might have this confused a bit, but isn't "crystal malt" typically a caramelised two-row, whereas caramunich is caramelised munich malt, which is a different flavour?

- Snow

 

[SJW]

You got it Snow, at least that's what my info tell's me. Anyway attached is the new look Oktoberfest. I took your advise and tryed not to make it over malty as i will be doing a Bock at the same time anyway.

View attachment 12.htm

 

[user 384]

isn't "crystal malt" typically a caramelised two-row, whereas caramunich is caramelised munich malt

Munich malt is made from 2-row barley (although a maltster could make it from 6-row if they really wanted). I think all malts available in Australia are made from 2-row grain, and it's basically just the Yanks that use 6-row for some of their malts.

For pale malts, vienna, munich, or any of the base malts, the process is:
1. take the barley and soak it
2. let the barley germinate, which is when a shoot called the acrospire grows
3. when the acrospire is roughly the same length as the kernel it's fully modified
4. you now "kiln" the malt which is a 2 step process Drying and Curing

Step 1 Drying, you dry the malt at a low temperature (32C - 38C) over about 2 days to drive off the moisture. It's complete when the moisture is about 4%-5%

Step 2 Curing, you take the dried grain and raise the temperature (78C-105C). Lower the temperature of curing, the lighter the colour of malt i.e. low temps for Pils. You can raise the temp near the end of the process to get high kilned malts like Amber.

For ALL crystal malts you don't kiln the barley, hence no drying or curing. You take the wet grain and heat it to mashing temps, 65C to low 70's. With the heat and mositure there is a micro-mash inside the grain, and the starch is converted to sugar. You then raise the temperature to crytalise/caramalise the sugars. Again lower temp for lighter crystal such as CaraPils, and higher for darker crystals like CaraAroma.

CaraMunich is just the name that one company has given to a medium crystal. It's not actually made from Munich malt.

This is a pretty simplified account of the malting process but I hope it helps.

Cheers
MAH

 

[GMK]

Nice Mark

 

[Snow]

Thanks for clearing that up, MAH. I blame those buggers in marketing <_<

- Snow

 

[Goat]

Great explanation of the basic preinciples MAH - very interesting.

Not that I thought there were Virgins and Goats involved, but malting process has always baffled me a bit. It seems its all (well, mostly) in the name !

I might even give it a go at home....

 

[GOLIATH]

Snow,

I think that'd be BRUCE from marketing. Bruce the brewing guy reckons he always stuffs things up!

Dave

 

[SJW]

OK Back to the revised attached recipe, if this is the case with the Munich malt i guess there is no need to use pale malt as the base malt, maybe i should just use an extra kg of Munich?

View attachment _12_OKTOBERFEST.htm

 

[wedge]

why not the munich will give you a very nice maltiness. Perhaps you wont need the menalodid (or however you spell it).

Hell, i've never done a bock. But is there any reason you cant go munich as the base grain and no menalodid.