8% Brown Malt

[alwilson]

EVening Guys,

I'm following a recipe for an old pale ale, which on the whole consists of 92% Pale and 8% brown malt.

Do you think that quantity of brown will impart that coffee flavour (because i dont really want that) I want to try something different for a pale, but dont want to end up with a brown porter otherwise I'd brew a brown porter

any thoughts on the impact of brown at this quantity?

Cheers

Alex

[seymour]

This original post is pretty old, but I'll answer anyway in case you're still interested.

No, I don't think you'll get any coffee from it. It's mostly interchangable with Crystal 50-60L. I've used both malts many times and didn't get any coffee essence (I think the grain would need to be toasted/roasted much darker for those effects.) What I like about Brown Malt is the color addition, nice bready flavor, slight caramelized sweetness, and well-rounded mouthfeel.

Did you brew the recipe as indicated? Regardless, how did it turn out?

[Barley Water]

Oh I must respectfully disagree. I think brown malt has a very distintive taste and at 8% I think you will for sure taste it. Dogfish head IPA's add some to the grist but it's a very small percentag (say 6oz in a 5 gallon batch in a 1.064 O.G. beer) and it adds a bit of "toast" to the taste, very nice by the way. I am currently drinking a Brown Porter (very similar to Fuller's London Porter) and I want to say there is maybe 12 ounces of that stuff in a 1.052 O.G. beer which maybe makes up roughly 10% of the grist in my sytem and yeah, it's a very pronounced flavor in that beer. To my taste, crystal malt (the good stuff anyway) has a caramel/toffee flavor depending on which roast you get where Brown malt is toasty, just a smidge short of roast (at least at say 10% of the grist). Crystal malts will tend to add unfermentable sugars to the wort as well as increase the body while Brown malt will not tend to do that. Of course as always, your milege may vary.

[seymour]

Oh I must respectfully disagree....Of course as always, your milege may vary.

Excellent points. I don't disagree at all, we've just had differing experiences. I think "brown malt" is a vague term maltsters apply to just about any malt which is brown in color or makes wort brown. How brown? Eh. How did it become brown: slow wet heat or rapidly broiled? Eh. Y'know what I mean? I think it's mainly an historic term describing the only kind of malt there was before modern industrial-age "pale malt", kilned over smokey fires or furnaces burning whatever type of dirty fuel was plentiful in each locale. When I make my own brown malt, I pre-soak grain or malted grain and cook it low and slow in a natural gas oven, so my resulting beer comes out pretty bready. If another malster makes brown malt by roasting it at very high temperatures, just not as long and hard as "roasted barley," then as you say 8% in the grainbill will be very pronounced. But I still don't know about coffee, do you?

So, Alex, if you're out there, did you end up brewing this recipe?

[alwilson]

Morning Guys,

Was going to reply last night, but after a day at the office I wasn't getting that 'use the computer some more' feeling.

8% Brown, in my experience was very very pronounced, ultimately, as BarleyWater point out it was a Brown Porter, very nice too.. But not what I was looking for. It still got drunk though. Would I brew it again? Probably not - I'd up the brown a bit more actually. My 8% put in definitely in the porter territory, no mistaking that.. But a wishy-washy porter. Like a porter before it grows up.

Alex

[seymour]

Duly noted. Thanks for the update!

[Swoonara]

I seem to recall an interview on the Brewing Network with the brewer from Meantime. They had investigated a bunch of old recipes to get ideas for their Meantime IPA. When they looked into brown malt they concluded that modern brown malt is not at all the same, and that the closest modern equivalent is Munich malt (Fawcetts, rather than Weyermann).

[Dr. Dextrin]

Interesting, but I thought brown malt was once a major component of porter. I don't think you'd be able to make much of a porter just using Fawcetts Munich malt. The original brown malt has to be at least a bit darker than that, I'd say.

[alwilson]

I believe the 'original' brown porter was diastatic and that you could use it up to 100% in the mash

Thats all I know regarding it though, couldn't tell you about colour.

[Barley Water]

Like everything else, the flavor you get using so called Brown malt is dosage dependant. Used at the rate frequently found in Porters, I guess I would call it extremely "toasty" but short of "roasty". I really don't think it tastes like coffee, it's unique and frankly I get all "hot and bothered" just thinking about it because I really love a nice Brown Porter and the good stuff has a lot of that malt in it. If I'm going for coffee I think I would opt for Roast Barley or Black Patent Malt or maybe even dark chocolate type malts. On the other hand, just a few ounces in a 5 gallon (or for you guys 19 liter) batch is going to add just a bit of toast flavor but it will be dry as versus sweet like you tend to get with say 40L Crystal malt. I would think you could add just a "smidge" to a bitter if you were trying to get a pretty dry beer with just a bit of toast. Anyhow I think that malt is useful depending what you are trying to achieve and I would urge folks to mess with it and see what you think.

I have 10lbs of American 2 row sitting around and I may well brew up an American pale ale with it and just dose it a bit with Brown malt (then of couse I'll hop the hell out of it, especially if I can get my mitts on some Amarillo and Simcoe hops). First though, I need to brew up an Octoberfest, that's what I get for shooting off my mouth at a recent brew club meeting.

[Dr. Dextrin]

I guess it's possible everyone gets something different when they buy brown malt, but to me it definitely has that stewed black coffee taste that gets progressively stronger as you go into pale chocolate and then chocolate malts.

Roasted barley to me doesn't taste of coffee at all. It tastes of black burnt toast.

Quite subjective these taste descriptions, aren't they?

[alwilson]

Agreed Dr Dextrin.

I find roast barley far too harsh and astringent.

Amber, Brown and Black for me all give off levels of coffe, chocolate and such.

[Barley Water]

Oh yes, this whole hobby is subjective. If you spend any time judging beer for contests you quickly find out people taste things differently and sometimes not at all. A great example is diacetyl, some people just can't taste it in beer while others will pick it up right away. Of those that do taste it, some love it in moderation (in styles where it is appropriate) while others absolutely hate it. I suppose that sort of thing is genetic, something to do with the way a persons taste buds are engineered.

[alwilson]

BarleyWater, I think Nelson Sauvin demonstrate subjectivity (word?) very well.. Most of the girls who tried my NS Pale think it tastes a bit soapy, whereas the blokes seem to love it. There is a thread on here somewhere that evolved into the soapiness of NS.. Really quite interesting!