Vienna, Munich or MO as a general base?

[DustyRusty]

Hi,

Couple of years into all grain brewing. Going well but struggled to get a big malty flavour i've wanted in a lot of the beers, even with higher mash temps. Been using Coopers Pale Ale Malt as my base. I tend to brew Red Ales, Brown Ales, Stouts, the occasional Belgian or yeasty German and always a Saison around Christmas time. Considering making Vienna, Munich or Marris Otter a major part of my base bill rather than the Coopers. Anyone want to recommend which one would be the most versatile? I'd like to store all three but i don't really have the space to do that. I tend to like to buy a 25kg bag for the value too. Any recommendations?

Thanks for your help

 

[MHB]

I would stay with the coopers PA as a base (or any one of the quality domestic ale malts, BB Ale is my go to) and invest in some Melanoidin, Aromatic, Abby, Special W, Amber.... some of the specialty malts made to add a big malty smell and flavour to beer.
100% Vienna or Munich is going to give you a dark and full bodied beer, but you are giving up all the other choices, MO is a pale ale base malt, but its one of the most expensive options. Sure in some beers its a worthwhile investment, but in what you say you're making mostly it would be lost.
Find some examples of the type of beer you are looking to model, look for some well sourced recipes and see where they get their flavour. You could post them here but I suspect you might get a confusing array of opinions.

One tip, you can hide a lot of malt behind hops, judicious use of hops can make the same grain bill really stand up.
Mark

 

[DustyRusty]

Thanks. This is really helpful. I have used melanoidin and often some crystal or dark crystal. Helps but not quite enough. I’ll try some of the other malts too. I wonder if I’m over hopping them too. Dry hopping everything is a constant temptation of mine... thanks again.

 

[MHB]

Try some Aromatic say 5%, really ups the malty smell, smell and taste are strongly linked.
Mark

 

[Kodos]

What type of yeast are you using? Some strains accentuate malt flavours more than others.

 

[DustyRusty]

What type of yeast are you using? Some strains accentuate malt flavours more than others.

for the maltier ones: notto, US-05, S-04 mostly.

 

[Hangover68]

I bought a 25kg sack of BB pale malt last year to use as my base malt, so far its worked out well for the styles i have brewed.
Looking to build up small quantities of specialty malts so i can increase my range.

 

[kadmium]

I like Crisp MO but I do mainly pale ales, English ales etc with it.

It's not really that much more exxy when buying by the 25kg sack and I like to use quality ingredients when I can. Nit saying JW or BB ain't quality, but English MO just makes me enjoy it more I guess. That's the beauty of HB. It's like cooking, I like the French butter and then I'm smashing it with garlic and all sorts of stuff, I could just use home brand or Western Star but I like Lurpak cause I feel fancier and I (placebo) think it makes a difference.

Thats my opinion. I bought a 25kg sack of Voyager Veloria. Don't rate it. Inconsistent mash efficiency. Use Czech Pilsner and get bang on. Use English MO get bang on. Use the Veloria, drop 6 or 7 points in OG. Pribably need to adjust the mill for that grain but that's too much hard work when I can use MO or Pils for every beer.

 

[Droopy Brew]

Vienna makes a wonderful beer by itself. I have done a couple of SMASH beers with it, not at all dark.
Have had a 100% Munich beer and that is definitely getting darker/red category. MO is beautiful as well.

My advice- have a go at using Vienna as a base in your red ale (add some Caraaroma and rye ) and see how it goes. If you like it get a bag.

 

[Markbeer]

I know you are talking base malt, but biscuit malt adds nice flavours without altering the colour too much.

The brands aren't all equal so you haver to check the EBC/lovibond.

 

[DustyRusty]

I know you are talking base malt, but biscuit malt adds nice flavours without altering the colour too much.

The brands aren't all equal so you haver to check the EBC/lovibond.

yep I use biscuit a bit. Like Briess Special Roast too - more intense but along the same lines. Great flavours there but not the rich maltyness I’m not getting.

 

[kadmium]

yep I use biscuit a bit. Like Briess Special Roast too - more intense but along the same lines. Great flavours there but not the rich maltyness I’m not getting.

Special roast adds a sourdough like tang. I use it in my ESB and enjoy it.

Crystals lead a sweetness but not that milo / horlicks malt flavour.

I like a solid base of MO, some biscuit and a little melanoidin. Could also try decoction mashing hahahahahahahah. Sad face.

Honestly? Go with the MO, and as MHB suggested try backing off the hops.

 

[raturay]

I'm still relatively inexperienced in my all grain brewing journey and haven't had a lot of success with producing malty brews. I have made a few that were very good but a lack of record keeping and now I'm not sure how I did it. I was talking to my LHB recently and he made the comment that at times he uses no, what he called hot hops, at all. Just a bit in the fermenter for some flavour and aroma. I can only agree with MHB's comment re the "judicious use of hops".
I will try it in my next attempt at my own recipe. I hint of EKG and/or Fuggles perhaps.

I I find some of the recipes from CAMRA's Brew Your Own British Ales, by Graham Wheeler, pretty useful. I ordered the book from a supplier in England a couple of years ago. I think it was $20 delivered and it arrived in a week! From Book Depository.

 

[DustyRusty]

I I find some of the recipes from CAMRA's Brew Your Own British Ales, by Graham Wheeler, pretty useful. I ordered the book from a supplier in England a couple of years ago. I think it was $20 delivered and it arrived in a week! From Book Depository.

Looks great! Just tried to order but seems to be a worldwide stock shortage on it.

 

[yankinoz]

"Malty" covers a lot of different flavours and aromas. Your brews no doubt have some of them and what you're missimng is hard to pin down.

MO and Voyager are examples of malts that carry over particularly strong and characteristic flavours from the grain. Kilning after partial saccharification produce caramel malts that taste like, well, caramel. Kilning without that steadily raises other distinctive flavours, increasingly so from Vienna through Munich, dark Munich and melanoidin or aroma. Biscuit and Victory/Special Roast are treated a little differently. Then there's roasting. So VBeinna and MO will give quite different results as base malts.

Descriptors like nutty and biscuity are only half-accurate.

Some of the distinctive flavours of Vienna and Munich are particularly susceptible to oxygen. caramel and roast flavours not so much. I suspect that's a reason German breweries showed much more early interest in low-oxygen methods that British ones I visited some years ago.

So my advice is to follow all the above advice, but one malt at a time. If you use, say, a Vienna base with biscuit, medium crystal, melanoidin and Special Roast (there are recipes like that), you'll get malty tastes for certain, but not necessarily what you're looking for or know where it came from. And easy on the hops in at least the experimental phase.

 

[Kodos]

for the maltier ones: notto, US-05, S-04 mostly.

Those are solid, fairly neutral yeasts, all pretty well attenuating. If you're keen to really accentuate malt flavour, maybe a lower attenuating yeast like Windsor, or one of the liquid strains like wlp-002 (English Ale) or wlp-028 (Scottish Ale).

Outside yeast, are you doing anything with water chemistry? A higher chloride to sulphate ratio can accentuate malt flavour as well.

 

[DustyRusty]

Those are solid, fairly neutral yeasts, all pretty well attenuating. If you're keen to really accentuate malt flavour, maybe a lower attenuating yeast like Windsor, or one of the liquid strains like wlp-002 (English Ale) or wlp-028 (Scottish Ale).

Outside yeast, are you doing anything with water chemistry? A higher chloride to sulphate ratio can accentuate malt flavour as well.

Thanks. Tried Windsor and didn’t like it - just too sickly sweet. Yep tried to higher chloride ratio too. Better but not quite there yet. Thanks!

 

[MHB]

Its rarely ever just one thing
The overall impression of a beer is the result of lots of complex interactions.
Can you give a couple of commercial examples that do fit the bill? Might help with tracking down a direction to try.

Personally I would drop Sulphate altogether, use Chloride and I use Calcium Lactate to add any extra Ca that is required once there is enough Chloride in the beer. Will assume you have removed all the Chlorine from your water.

Might be a bit left field but if you have a good pH meter, have a look at your finished beer pH a couple of points either side of say 4.1pH can make a big difference, I would be tweaking the beer pH post fermentation, or at least doing a couple of glass sized taste comparisons and see if that helps.
Mark

 

[DustyRusty]

thanks mate. I kind of realised this when i bought a Shepherd Neame Kentish Strong Ale and was instantly hit by the bit maltiness and flavour. My beers, while good had more of a crispness to them without the richness. I attempted a British Strong Ale with a high temp mash, some crystal and biscuit and went very easy on hops. It was sweet but at the same time tasted a bit like canned homebrew - just too simple and lacking in the same kind of flavour. I like my reds, browns, stouts etc but all of them are too 'American' rather than English. They just don't have the rich maltiness i'm quite looking for. DId a dunkel recently and that is better (lots of munich malt) but nothing like the Shepherd Neame in it's malty richness.

i used about 70% RO water to 30% local water (Perth). Water here is very high in chloride, so i tend not to add much. I need gypsum to add calcium. If i don't, i'm easily below the calcium i need for a healthy ferment.

Thanks for the thoughts on ph - i haven't focused on this much bar designing a recipe around a target ph. thanks everyone!

 

[DustyRusty]

Hobgoblin is another one that has something close to what I'm looking for.