Grain substitutes

[SilverShadow]

Hi there,

I'm still very much treading the thin line of all grain brewing, and this will be my 3rd attempt.

I'm having trouble sourcing some of the grains used in some of the IPA recipes I'm finding. Most of them are American, and some of the grain types don't seem to be available here in the UK

I was wondering if anyone has found a UK source for the following, or could suggest a suitable alternative malt:

Honey
White wheat
Crystal malt 60L (presume any old medium crystal will do for this?)
Cara pils/dextrine

Thanks for your help. As a brew noob I plunged right into grain brewing, but think it'll be a long time till I understand it. In the meantime I'll just torture my tastebuds a whole longer

 

[Slid]

OK, for a third brew, here is my suggestion:

Honey Malt - just go base malt
White wheat - use Wheat Malt
Crystal 60 - as you say, medium crystal
Cara Pils - Pale Crystal

So, if you have Pale Malt, Wheat Malt and Crystal, the Pale Malt replaces the Honey
The Crystal replaces the C60 and the Cara Pils
If you have some wheat malt, that does for the White Wheat - if you don't have it, go more Pale / Base malt.

It will all be fine, not quite identical, but it will be a decent beer at the end.

You are discovering, at this stage, how to get the best from your brewing stuff and how you use it. Don't over think it at this point, just take some sort of record of what you did and how it turned out.

 

[Obadiah Boondoggle]

Hi there,

I'm still very much treading the thin line of all grain brewing, and this will be my 3rd attempt.

I'm having trouble sourcing some of the grains used in some of the IPA recipes I'm finding. Most of them are American, and some of the grain types don't seem to be available here in the UK

I was wondering if anyone has found a UK source for the following, or could suggest a suitable alternative malt:

Honey
White wheat
Crystal malt 60L (presume any old medium crystal will do for this?)
Cara pils/dextrine

Thanks for your help. As a brew noob I plunged right into grain brewing, but think it'll be a long time till I understand it. In the meantime I'll just torture my tastebuds a whole longer

I think that you will struggle to find Honey Malt in the UK - but some people regard Melanoidin as the best substitute - unless anyone can advise otherwise

In terms of white Wheat I suggest you follow this link White Wheat substitute?

Malsters like to create new and exciting names for malts - to sell more

Follow these links to our malt buying collective

Dextrin

I do not know where you might buy Crystal 60 - but again Crystal 100

You are welcome to buy from our collective but I suspect there you will find Dextrin and Crystal 100 in many places, Our website will give you more details though

 

[SilverShadow]

Thanks guys, most helpful

Can I check what you mean by base malt please? Sorry, its a real basic question, but hopefully one that'll remove the fog from my understanding. I'm sure I can Google if all else fails

I'm going via the biab route, and right now absorbing as much info as I can. Results so far have been, how shall I say, 'varied'

 

[Obadiah Boondoggle]

A base malt is simply the malt you use most of in a recipe - you would only use e.g. Dextrin in small quantities to add a specific flavour or character to your brew. Most brews are made up of 90%ish of "base malt" - either a pale or a lager malt

Have a look at this simple guide to choosing malt

 

[SilverShadow]

Thanks again for your help. All this advice is golden to me

 

[WonkyDonkey]

Thanks again for your help. All this advice is golden to me

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/gambrinus-honey-malt-crushed-500g-p-4006.htmlYou can get honey malt delivered from the above. I've used it before as it does get called for in a lot of US NE IPA recipes, which may be what you're trying to replicate?
Quite a few here buy grain etc from THBC. Might work for you if you are buying other malts at the same time

 

[gavp1979]

The homebrew company also sell Cara Pils, I have ordered quite a lot from them and never had a problem

https://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=138

 

[chopps]

Where are you based @SilverShadow ?
I have a bit of Honey malt to spare.

 

[SilverShadow]

Brilliant work as always guys

I'm based in Nottingham. Many thanks for the offer of the honey malt - the recipe only needs 70g. Only snag is I probably won't get around to brewing this recipe till later in the year, so much rather you use it if you need it, than have it live in the freezer for 3 months

 

[slowdave]

Is there a good guide in existence for grain substitutes?

 

[The Baron]

You can get honey malt from THBS. order some when you order from them next time it can be quite intense so do not use a lot unless you want a intense honey taste.
I have used it a lot but never more than 200g as I just like a background taste, it's nice in Blondes and Goldens just to give a little more complexity

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I put 500g (8.8%) of honey malt into a Waggledance clone together with 450g of honey.

 

[SilverShadow]

I put 500g (8.8%) of honey malt into a Waggledance clone together with 450g of honey.

Do you have online link to the recipe please mate? I'm more IPA these days, but used to love that

 

[Cheshire Cat]

23 L Waggledance
4500g MO
500g Honey Malt
200g Carapils
450g Honey last 10 minutes of boil.
35g Bramling cross 60 minutes
25g EKG 15 minutes
Safale S04 yeast
BHE 70%
ABV 5.6%

 

[trueblue]

The malt miller sell all of these. The white wheat is sold in the UK as pale wheat malt

 

[An Ankoù]

Hi there,

I'm still very much treading the thin line of all grain brewing, and this will be my 3rd attempt.

I'm having trouble sourcing some of the grains used in some of the IPA recipes I'm finding. Most of them are American, and some of the grain types don't seem to be available here in the UK

I was wondering if anyone has found a UK source for the following, or could suggest a suitable alternative malt:

Honey
White wheat
Crystal malt 60L (presume any old medium crystal will do for this?)
Cara pils/dextrine

Thanks for your help. As a brew noob I plunged right into grain brewing, but think it'll be a long time till I understand it. In the meantime I'll just torture my tastebuds a whole longer

Hi Silver Shadow.
Honey malt is a weird one. It's almost certainly Gambrinus Honley malt, which, others have pointed out, is available in the UK. You can substitute a melanoidin malt in the same colour range although it's not exactly the same. One UK supplier offers Colorado Honey Malt, which is quite different.
If you're going to follow US recipes, I'd recommend you download a conversion table between degrees Lovibond and ebc. It's not a linear conversion. Any old medium crystal will do if its around 150 ebc. Beware of Crisp's crystal malts: their medium is anyone else's dark so you need to use their light crystal.
Carapils is easily available and use ordinary (not dark) wheat malt.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Carapils is easily available and use ordinary (not dark) wheat malt.

Carapils is one of the classic "gotchas". In most of the world, the trademark is held by Weyermann and is used for their "caramel-pilsner" malt. But Briess trademarked it in the US and use it for their dextrin malt.

So when you see carapils in US recipes it usually means a dextrin malt (which are labelled as dextrin malts in the UK), used to give a bit of extra body in eg NEIPAs. But USians get as confused about this as anybody else, so sometimes you see US recipes where they've taken a European recipe for eg lager and really mean a caramel-pilsner malt!

Just generally, beware the recipe Chinese whispers and don't get too hung up on specific ingredients.

The history of brewing is all about people adapting "foreign" recipes to use local ingredients. So for instance, a lot of US recipes will approximate the English pale malt and crystal of a bitter recipe with US 2-row and caramel. Then a British homebrewer will see the recipe and think you can't possibly make a proper bitter without US malt and caramel and be in despair because they are relatively hard to come by here. Whereas the US malt and caramel are just some USian's approximation to the "authentic" British ingredients.

Understand the recipe and understand what it's trying to achieve, and understand how local ingredients will get you there. For instance, British barley is a gold standard around the world, partly because of its low protein content which helps produce clear beer. But if you're wanting to brew a hazy beer, then you might need to tweak a recipe to add more of a protein-rich grain like wheat if you're using British malt as your base.

"White" wheat does not refer to the finished product, but the colour of the husk - North American wheat varieties have either "white" or "red" husks, but there's not a huge difference in end flavour between them, just use regular UK wheat (although it too will probably have a bit less protein content).

And in general, assume wheat is unmalted unless it is explicitly stated as such.

 

[Braufather]

The history of brewing is all about people adapting "foreign" recipes to use local ingredients. So for instance, a lot of US recipes will approximate the English pale malt and crystal of a bitter recipe with US 2-row and caramel. Then a British homebrewer will see the recipe and think you can't possibly make a proper bitter without US malt and caramel and be in despair because they are relatively hard to come by here. Whereas the US malt and caramel are just some USian's approximation to the "authentic" British ingredients.

i thought about this. A lot of us IPA recipes use two row and Munich, but I guess if they had cheap and plentiful access to Maris otter for example they would use that much more. So whilst US hops are non negotiable, we can probably add more complex flavours with English or european malts (and yeasts) Compared to US examples.

 

[Braufather]

Carapils. I only use weyermans cara for any recipe calling for carapils or dextrin. Thought they were interchangeable?