Black Malt, how much is too much?

[BeerisGOD]

Been doing a fair bit of searching to no avail on the web.

does anyone know the maximum percentage for this grain in a recipe?:thumb:ive gone over board with roastd barley before and don't want to make the same mistake

Cheers

 

[Smileyr8]

Been doing a fair bit of searching to no avail on the web.

does anyone know the maximum percentage for this grain in a recipe?:thumb:ive gone over board with roastd barley before and don't want to make the same mistake

Cheers

I have used it but don't recall the amount but it was too much, the taste/flavour is burnt and not very nice, I binned what I had left as I could not see my self using it again..

 

[Gunge]

Dunno why you'd want to use it in anything other than stout or porter... but I use a 50/50 mix of black malt and roast barley instead of just roast barley in chez Gunge stout, and it's all the better for it.

 

[Pavros]

I read somewhere (but can't recall where) that you can substitute carafa special 3 for black malt as it gives similar colour without the roastiness. I'm thinking of trying it in a black ipa. Not going to use much as it's mainly for colour.

 

[Ajhutch]

I’ve done three different stout recipes to a maximum of 15% dark malts. My last one was 11%, an even mix of black malt, chocolate malt and roasted barley and I find it a pretty pleasant balanced flavour.

 

[foxbat]

Graham Wheeler makes use of it in a lot of the recipes in BYOBRA for colour adjustment. For bitters he generally doesn't go over about 50g for a 23l batch. Much more for a mild, for example his Gales Festival Mild has 295g/23l. To quote from his intro:

"In many cases a small amount of black malt has been added to adjust for colour when the brewery obviously uses caramel or dark invert sugar. You can safely omit small quantities of black malt if you are not too fussy about matching colour. It is a very woolly approximation anyway"

I'd guess that doesn't apply to the mild recipes where the quantity used is obviously much more than is required for colour only.

 

[Zephyr259]

The Brewdog Jet Black Heart clone has equal amounts of black malt and carafa special I as it's roasted malts comes in at 4% each and is a nice smooth stout. CS I is more of a chocolate malt than a roasted barley / black malt though. Not sure I'd go above 5%, there's 2 old porter recipes here that both work out to a fraction over 5%.

I think it was on Basic Brewing radio where they discussed black malt, brulosophy may have done an experiment too. Think the decision is that it's a good grain to use in a blend of other roasts as it seems to marry the flavours together nicely.

 

[MyQul]

You aint been looking hard enough, ya lazy bugger

http://www.brupaks.com/BRUPAKS GRAIN GUIDE WEB.htm

This is produced by roasting British pale malt as far as possible without burning. It is the preferred darkener in sweeter Stouts and Porters and can be used for minor colour adjustments in other beers.
Colour 1400 EBC; Maximum percentage 10%

Tbh I'd take the maximum percentages on the brupaks grain guide as just that, a guide as I know for a fact some of them are wrong

 

[BeerisGOD]

I dumped too much in but after two months in the bottle it's mellowing out. By new year I think this will be a lot more enjoyable.
Did this with roasted barley. Time cured it. Anyone else used too much but eventually the beer came good?

 

[foxbat]

I dumped too much in but after two months in the bottle it's mellowing out. By new year I think this will be a lot more enjoyable.
Did this with roasted barley. Time cured it. Anyone else used too much but eventually the beer came good?

How much was too much (on both)? Always good to know our limits.

 

[jeg3]

I dumped too much in but after two months in the bottle it's mellowing out. By new year I think this will be a lot more enjoyable.
Did this with roasted barley. Time cured it. Anyone else used too much but eventually the beer came good?

I did a stout a couple of years ago and the first runnings were like molasses. It had way to much roasted barley, black malt and too much oats in it and tasted so licorice that it took about four months to condition. It ended up more like an imperial porter (if such a style exists)

 

[BeerisGOD]

How much was too much (on both)? Always good to know our limits.

Ok if I can remember I used 100g on a pimped up at peters ruby and this took over five months to mellow. Came out a gorgeous pint in end. The batch size was 20litres.
The more recent one was a porter with 127g of black patent. This is the one I reckon will be ok by new year, be about four months by then. This was an 19 litre batch.

I will be keeping these two malts to around 70 g in future obviously depending on the batch size. Hope this guideline helps

 

[BeerCat]

Most have used is 5%. Roast barley is about 15%. If you don't like the roastiness try cold steeping. It works really well.