Making a good "base beer" for hoppy "new-world style" beers

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ryan

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Baring the hops, I've been using pretty much the same basic ingredients for my beers up to now. Apart from changing the amount of crystal malt and torrified wheat, I haven't really experimented with any other malts yet. The beers I've been brewing come out pretty good on the hops side, but ignoring the hops have been a bit too basic for me and don't have much to say in the way of malt taste.

I don't know if any of you have ever had the Marble Lagonda IPA or Marble Tawny but these beers have such an awesome background taste .. everything blends together perfectly in them, so this is what I want to eventually acheive with my beers. I'll prolly never get anywhere near to making something comparable to a Marble beer but if I can get on the way to learning how to get good complex malty bases for my beers then that's a start!!

So my question to you all is basically .. What have you learnt about making a good basic bitter? - one that works well with lots of hops.

Thought I'd ask a pretty wide open question as the responses will hopefully be something a lot of us can learn from...
 
I guess it depends on your particular taste. I'm a light-coloured ale but moderate alcohol man and therefore love beers like Summer Lightning and Kronenberg Blanc etc (yeah I know, more a wheat beer than a bitter beer). My mate who loves sampling my beers (drinking half a keg) hates my Summer Lightning because it's too bitter for him. He does however love my Hogsback TEA because it has a fair bit of crystal malt in it which gives that caramel taste, I personally don't like it and can't wait for him to get it finished so that I can reclaim my keg and put beer into it that I do like!

I have done several 'darker' beers with crystal and indeed have some chocolate malt ready for the next brew (Riggwelter) but I invariably end up back at the Summer Lightning type clones, crystal malt just doesn't agree with me, I'm not a lover of the caramel taste. I'll continue making anything and everything in my persuit for the perfect pint including those with crystal malt in but all you can do is keep experimenting until you find what you want.

Ironically, without a doubt the best brew I've done to press was Summer Lightning that I mixed the hops up on. It was Challenger at boil and EKG at the end and somehow I switched them round so the 50g of Challenger at boil became 50g of EKG and it was absolutely sublime! I'm definitely going to screw that recipe up again at some point. :)
 
Yeah I think crystal malt does have a nice tang to it.. I don't like putting too much in though, just enough to make it just about there to kind of fill up the blanks so to speak. Just enough to be able to taste and add a bit of a kick to the plain pale malt taste.

I definitely need to get myself some other malts though, is there any other malts you've used that you'd want in a pale?
 
Caramalt for me, its a very light crystal malt, that does not have that cloying sweetness fo the darker crystal malts . . . it also doesn't colour as deeply.

Then Munich . . . most of my recipes have at least some Munich in to boost the malt profile . . . in paler beers you could use Vienna Malt . . .

For the redder beers try Caramalt Instead of Dark Crystal, and use Melanoidin Malt for 'colour' you'll only need a few % (under 5) but the increase in malt profile is incredible . . . don't overdo it though . . .to get the rest of the colour then Carafa Special I is a good choice.
 
OK .. Think I'll grab a bag of vienna to try out first .. I prefer to try things one at a time so I know what's doing what.

Going back to just making a good pint for a hoppy beer.. what about other factors then.. the type of yeast or fermenting / conditioning temps?
 
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