Chevallier malt

[IainM]

I've seen a few places selling a Chevallier malt, a heritage strain of barley that was popular in the 19th century until it was out-done by higher yielding varieties. It is expensive, about four times the cost of the cheapest pale ale malts, but everywhere that sells it is, unsurprisingly, singing its virtues are a very malt forward base malt which produces very rich and flavourful beer. I'm considering doing a small stovetop SMASH to test it out. Has anyone actually used it?

 

[Zephyr259]

It's sitting in my GEB wishlist... I was thinking the same, expensive but still makes "cheap" beer and would probably still work out cheaper than a highly hopped pale ale. I've got a recipe for a 19th century bitter which is just pale ale malt and amber, was considering using this and toasting some to make the amber since then I won't be masking it with anything else. Otherwise might try and more modern ESB with it? Playing with malts seems to be more my thing than playing with hops. :-)