Pale malt question

[StewarmUK]

Hi all

I am in the initial stages of turning 3 steel pots into a brewery and have decided that I should think about ordering some initial ingredients.

I am probably going to do a simple IPA from my 'Home Brew Beer' book

This calls for Pale Malt and Crystal Malt but........which ones ?

I have had a look on the Malt Millers site and can see 4 different pale ale malts (is pale ale the same as pale ?) and 3 crystal.

How do I decide which to use ? Is it a simple case of pick 2 and see what it tastes like ?

Thanks
Bob

 

[hairybiker]

The vast majority of beers are made using Marris Otter.
Or just "pale ale malt"
Crystal is specified in the colour range, light/normal/dark. Go for normal or the middle one if unsure.

 

[pittsy]

You have 2 basic type of grain , base malt which is the main ingredient and would be pale ale , pilsner, wheat , lager, Vienna ,etc and the other is a specialty malt than is used for flavour and colour like crystal malt , cara ..... Malts choc etc . You usually only want 5 to 10% of these if any .

 

[clibit]

You can buy UK, German and Belgian pale and crystal malts. Keep it simple and start with UK.

There are several Uk pale malts. You can buy Maris Otter, Halcyon, Pearl, Optic, Pearl, Golden Promise, Flagon, UK Pilsner, Mild Ale, Lager and UK Vienna.

Maris Otter is a very good starting point. The first 7 in the list are all pale ale malts, all good quality, different breeds of barley. The last 4 are all varieties taht are kilned for specific purposes, but can be used creatively. You can, for example, make a pale ale with lager malt.

UK crystal malts range from very pale to very dark, the higher the number the darker it is. A lot of commercial ales use a crystal in the middle of the range, around 140 EBC or 70 Lovibond, two methods of describing colour. But all shades are widely used, from around 10 EBC (Caramalt) to around 400 EBC (extra dark crystal).

Maybe buy a kg of light (around 10 - 40 EBC), a kg of medium ( say 100 - 150 EBC) and a kg of dark ( around 200 - 250 EBC), and check them out. For your recipe, use any pale malt and a medium crystal, the most likely type, unless the recipe specifies something different.

 

[StewarmUK]

Thanks for the responses.

Time to place that order :

Bob

 

[Farmbrew]

Thanks for the responses.

Time to place that order :

Bob

Just a note re:lager malt. This is pretty close to standard US pale ale malt and us a useful and usually slightly cheaper substitute for the UK Pale Malts for American beers.

Happy Brewing, F