Base grain for most brews?

[liams1989]

Yeah, it's the norm to have a standard pale malt which gets used for almost everything - there's not a huge difference between different "standard" pale malts of the same level of kilning. You've not said what kind of beers you're into, if you're planning lagers then you want a pilsner or extra-pale malt, otherwise just standard British pale malt or one of the named varieties thereof.

You have to be aware that traditionally since malt was heavy and expensive, people generally took a recipe and substituted in their "local" base malt for cost reasons - so Germans would make a English bitter recipe with pilsner malt, in North American they would use US 2-row and so on. Such attempts to make foreign beers with local ingredients can evolve into styles of their own - eg the origins of American Amber ales lie in US attempts to make bitter with 2-row and local caramel malts.

Conversely you have to be aware of the "Chinese whisper" effect when using foreign recipes - I've seen Brits trying to make a bitter based on an American recipe, and asking what exotic & expensive replacements they can find in the UK to substitute for US 2-row and Victory malt, when those are only in the recipe as a US approximation to bog-standard UK pale malt.

On the assumption that if you can afford an all-in-one you're not going to be quibbling too much about a quid or two extra, then it's probably worth going for named varieties like Maris Otter or Golden Promise rather than generic pale malt made from a blend of industrial varieties.




The average barley variety has a typical lifespan of only 10 years or so before it gets superceded by new varieties with marginal gains in yield, disease resistance etc. We've talked about this more over on HBT, but the key graph is this one. Twenty years ago it was all Optic as the summer variety and Pearl as the winter barley. Then Tipple took over, but since then it diversified somewhat - Propino and Concerto and Venture were big 5 years ago but have now been largely replaced by Planet and Laureate. This graph gives you an idea of how fluid things are.
View attachment 57277

Maris Otter and Golden Promise are the exceptions to the rule, in that they have effectively assumed "heritage" status and are kind of outside the normal barley market. But 95% of malt is made from varieties on the AHDB Recommended List of malting barleys, which are a dozen or so varieties that have been tested over a number of years in different regions, so that farmers can be confident that they should yield well and have decent disease resistance, and which are also tested to meet the requirements of maltsters for protein content, consistency of grain size etc. As better varieties come along, they push older ones off the list - typically 2-3 varieties make up 70+% of the crop, the others can be used in niche situations such as particular heavy soils, or windy sites, or where a particular disease is a problem. It's reasonably unusual for a variety to stay on the list for much more than 10 years these days.

So if you buy a sack of generic pale malt, it will be made up of one or more varieties on the Recommended List, sometimes you may order "pale malt" and when the sack arrives it will say the name of a specific variety like "Planet" or "Laureate" etc, but sometimes not.

In general the varieties on the Recommended List are generally selected to work well for farmers and in the malthouse, but not necessarily for flavour - after all, they're what Carling is made from! So unless cash is really tight, it's not unreasonable to spend the extra couple of quid to buy GP or Otter.

Personally the majority of my beers are SMaSH-ish golden ales, so often the only malt I have in stock is a floor-malted Otter from the likes of Warminster or Fawcetts - makes inventory control much easier!

Thanks for the really detailed response. Yes I should have said I mainly will brew ales and bitters. But may try a lager at some stage but believe that I need to cold crash lager and haven’t got that option right now

 

[The Baron]

Hi Liam you can do lagers in the winter if you have a cold place such as a garage etc. I even after years of brewing do not have a fermentation fridge as SWMBO says I have not got room for another fridge(but at some time I will get one) so I use kveik for most of my ales/IPA's etc and ferment high that is pitch at 40c and wrap them up to keep the temp in and do lager types in the winter so usually ferment somewhere cool in the house then use the garage to cold crash. I also have the ability to lager in a shed or in my garden pub as in the winter it is obviously cooler than anywhere else

 

[liams1989]

Hi Liam you can do lagers in the winter if you have a cold place such as a garage etc. I even after years of brewing do not have a fermentation fridge as SWMBO says I have not got room for another fridge(but at some time I will get one) so I use kveik for most of my ales/IPA's etc and ferment high that is pitch at 40c and wrap them up to keep the temp in and do lager types in the winter so usually ferment somewhere cool in the house then use the garage to cold crash. I also have the ability to lager in a shed or in my garden pub as in the winter it is obviously cooler than anywhere else

My shed is full lol however I think my loft will be fairly chilly so could be an option.

 

[fury_tea]

If you want to make a lager, as @the baron says, 'brewing with the seasons' is a really great way of doing it.

There's also 'pseudo lagers', which is where you take a lager recipe and just switch the lager yeast for a clean fermenting ale yeast (I've had some great results with Nottingham yeast - which I believe is Gervin ale yeast from Wilco's) and ferment at the lower end of the temp scale (but no need to go as low as lager temps).

The other approach is to take a lager yeast (Saflager 34-70 is what I've used to good effect) and ferment it at warmer temps (I've had a friend-foolingly good lager brewed at 18c).

Good luck!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I've learnt from experience that choice of malt in a SMaSH is of paramount importance. I made two SMaSH lagers at the beginning of the year, for a laugh really: one an "English "lager (Called lager Lout) with Crisp's Plumage Archer malt and the other a "Scottish" lager (called Free Scotland) with Crafty Maltsters Pop's Pale Ale malt

That's a bit different, comparing a heritage variety like Plumage Archer with modern ones. I was talking about the difference between modern varieties - you'd be hard put to tell the difference between Concerto and Laureate for example. Some modern varieties do have a bit more flavour than others - Flagon is probably the best of them which has contributed to its longevity.

Thanks for the really detailed response. Yes I should have said I mainly will brew ales and bitters. But may try a lager at some stage but believe that I need to cold crash lager and haven’t got that option right now

In that case you can't really go wrong with some Otter or Golden Promise - and knowing that you've got one of the best malts just means that you don't have to worry about malts for a while, when you'll be faffing about lots of other things as you get to grips with your new kit. Dorst is right that extra-pale/pilsner is a flexible base for European styles but personally I don't like it at much more than 20-30% for ales unless the hop bill is very busy.

But if you are interested in lager then it might be worth picking up 5kg or even a sack of extra-pale/pilsner to play with. As others have said, you can make pretty acceptable pseudo-lagers at relatively warm temperatures - the likes of 34/70 and M54 Californian are a lot more forgiving of temperature than conventional wisdom would have you believe, and I would definitely use them ahead of ale yeasts, no matter how clean. There's a big thread on warm "lagers" over on HBT - this post links to a podcast and article from Fermentis about their tests on 34/70 :

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/warm-fermented-lager-thread.592169/page-41#post-9129938
Or you should definitely take advantage of winter temperatures - stable and a bit warmer is generally better than fluctuating and a bit colder. Also if you're doing it somewhere like your loft, do have a tray to catch spills and overflows!

 

[Braufather]

I get were your coming from but, for me the joy is in the making and the challenge

im a bit like like with cooking. Love it when the mrs says there’s nothing in and then I rustle up something nice out what I can find at the back of the fridge etc. That said it’s only one meal. If I’m going have 40 pints to get through I think twice about experimenting!

 

[Braufather]

Maybe get extra pale MO and a load of carsmalt or Munich. That should mean you could replicate anything from pilsner up to something close regular Maris otter between them.

 

[Rodcx500z]

im a bit like like with cooking. Love it when the mrs says there’s nothing in and then I rustle up something nice out what I can find at the back of the fridge etc. That said it’s only one meal. If I’m going have 40 pints to get through I think twice about experimenting!

You know beer is a lot like cooking, some of my best beers have been made with what's left a bit like what's left in the fridge, try a user upper you might surprise yourself

 

[fury_tea]

Maybe get extra pale MO and a load of carsmalt or Munich. That should mean you could replicate anything from pilsner up to something close regular Maris otter between them.

EPMO might be my favourite malt light malt. Made some banging pilsner/lager styles with that as 100% of the grist

 

[Braufather]

EPMO might be my favourite malt light malt. Made some banging pilsner/lager styles with that as 100% of the grist

funny you say that, looking back at my notes, I’ve been using it in american IPAs/ pales, and it works well with hops, but once the hops have faded a bit it tastes a bit largerish, so am thinking if not using it for ales so much. When I get round to doing a larger I will give it a go though!

 

[Braufather]

You know beer is a lot like cooking, some of my best beers have been made with what's left a bit like what's left in the fridge, try a user upper you might surprise yourself

im considering starting to by in bulk, and crushing my own, so may get round to that! At the moment even after 3 years I’m still trying to work out my favourites malt combinations myself.

I suggested extra pale above with Munich but looking back at my notes I’ve had better results with weyerman pale and with golden promise, at least for juicy ipas. I’ve got a regular mariss otter in one at the moment.

 

[Rodcx500z]

The four i use are pale malt, pilsner, munich, and vienna

 

[Arcs]

Looking through earlier editions of Wheeler's books, we have Maris Otter, Halcyon, Pipkin, Golden Promise, etc etc. Later editions pretty much specify simply "pale malt". Local brewers used what they could get from their local malster, I think, and many of these malts are no longer easily available.
Get a full sack of a good malt. I use Crisp's Best Pale Ale or Hookhead Pale depending on who I'm ordering from. I really only use MO for Summer Lightning (I'm not even sure that Hopback use MO all the time). And I'm moving over to using Chevallier for my very best pales and bitters and even in a mild.
I hope Crisp keep the Chevallier line going as it's lovely stuff, but it's getting a bit expensive.

I've got some malts I need to use up as their getting a little old: Bestmalz Red-X and Simpson's Imperial in particular. Both of these are fully diastatic and I thinking of using up to 90% in dark beers. I rather fancy the Red-X might give a Guinness clone that slighly sour, flavour which is so hard to find otherwise.

Perhaps even that Watney's Red Barrel project too

 

[phettebs]

If I'm going to be brewing a bunch of English beers, I buy a sack of Maris Otter. If I'm brewing American beers, I tend to buy US 2-row or pale malt. For any Belgian beers, I buy Belgian pilsner malt.

I rarely brew American lagers but when I do, I will use American 6-row as the base malt and go from there.

 

[Braufather]

If I'm going to be brewing a bunch of English beers, I buy a sack of Maris Otter. If I'm brewing American beers, I tend to buy US 2-row or pale malt. For any Belgian beers, I buy Belgian pilsner malt.

I rarely brew American lagers but when I do, I will use American 6-row as the base malt and go from there.

Out of interest, if you were in the uk where Maris Otter or golden promise were cheap( relatively) and plentiful, would you use them more as base malts in very hop forward US IPAs/pales beer styles or would you stick with regular pale ale or lager/Pilsner malts , the thinking being they similar to the US two row, and you you feel the balance would be better?

 

[stubrewworx]

I used a different base malt for each brew in a 6ish brew batch. E.g 3.2kg crisp pale, 4.3kg pilsner, 3.9kg gp and so on.

This way, the maltmiller supplied each of my bases weighed and bagged. I just then made up the rest of the bill with specialty malts.

It was done out of convenience and because I brewed different styles in a batch, but also to test which gave me the best mash efficiency. Crisp europils and extra pale have marginally being the best.

Not sure if I'll continue this way, as I was planning a 'back to basics' batch.

 

[Braufather]

I used a different base malt for each brew in a 6ish brew batch. E.g 3.2kg crisp pale, 4.3kg pilsner, 3.9kg gp and so on.

This way, the maltmiller supplied each of my bases weighed and bagged. I just then made up the rest of the bill with specialty malts.

It was done out of convenience and because I brewed different styles in a batch, but also to test which gave me the best mash efficiency. Crisp europils and extra pale have marginally being the best.

Not sure if I'll continue this way, as I was planning a 'back to basics' batch.

efficiency aside we’re the any notable flavour or mouthfeel differences etc!?

 

[prog99]

Nice one CC. We crossed in the post.
Looking back at my notes for 2020, I see my formulations were informed by one Gillian Grafton who was a pioneer in the field. Ever come across her?

Yes , she contributed greatly to the old ukhomebrewing mailing list. I recognise a few folk here who used to be members too.

 

[phettebs]

Out of interest, if you were in the uk where Maris Otter or golden promise were cheap( relatively) and plentiful, would you use them more as base malts in very hop forward US IPAs/pales beer styles or would you stick with regular pale ale or lager/Pilsner malts , the thinking being they similar to the US two row, and you you feel the balance would be better?

I would actually. MO has way more character than the rather bland US pale malt. I've brewed my APA and IPA with MO and it's a completely different beer than when I use US 2-row. It just has a richer character to it than US base malt, in my opinion. Honestly. I feel like I'm wasting it when I use it in an IPA. Kinda of like taking an expensive single malt scotch and adding cola to it!

 

[stubrewworx]

efficiency aside we’re the any notable flavour or mouthfeel differences etc!?

Not that I could detect. There were other issues with my beers!