Using Vienna

alsch890 · Jul 17, 2018

Hi there,

I think Vienna is the only "major" malt I am yet to use so I have been putting together a couple of recipes to try and learn about it. The first is a rather simple single hop (Mosaic) pale ale and this is my grain bill:

Pale ale malt 3.2kg
Vienna malt 0.6kg
Carapils 0.2kg

Aiming to get 18 litres out and hit 1.056

Now my question is this - is 600g sufficient? I was going on a 15% of total bill rule of thumb but wondering whether upping it to say 800g would work, and dropping the pale accordingly? or is that not going to make a big difference?

Cheers,

alsch

peebee · Jul 17, 2018

I'm not sure you'll really notice anything (except noticing nothing). Vienna Malt is only very lightly kilned to about 7-8EBC whereas Pale Malt will have been kilned to 5-6EBC. It has more relevance to "Lager Malt" or "Low Coloured Malt" kilned to around 3EBC. Vienna malt is not caramelised like Carapils/Caramalt so doesn't possess much of those light flavours.

The continental "under-modified" malts were once made a bit differently (and used differently with "decoction" mashes), but much of that is by the way now. I imagine the popular usage of these malts now has come from America where much of the malt will have been created as very mildly flavoured "lager malt". The "Munich Malts" are kilned somewhat darker (10-50EBC) and are much more likely to make their presence known and fit between UK pale and amber malts.

"Major" malt? Step back a decade or two and hardly any UK home-brewers (or even commercial brewers) will have heard of "Vienna Malt".

GerritT · Jul 17, 2018

As far as I know it's closer to pale than for instance Munich, so why not 50/50?
It has a bit maltier taste than pale, so some brewers have 85%base+10%vienna+5%carapils for a balanced brew.

And that's all I read about it.

Plenty people with more experience here though. Ladies?

MickDundee · Jul 17, 2018

As the others have said, 15% isn’t going to give you any indicator of its flavour. I use it at 40-50% in my APAs.

alsch890 · Jul 18, 2018

GerritT said:
As far as I know it's closer to pale than for instance Munich, so why not 50/50?
It has a bit maltier taste than pale, so some brewers have 85%base+10%vienna+5%carapils for a balanced brew.

And that's all I read about it.

Plenty people with more experience here though. Ladies?

Thanks @GerritT i think the friend that suggested this recipe to me probably does it because he had read something similar (albeit 80/15/5 rather than 85/10/5)

and thanks @MickDundee - although I think I'll stick at the lower end this time (mainly because the other recipe I have for Vienna is a kind of Oktoberfest/Marzen that has it at over 50% so wanted one with a lower amount to compare) I am definitely already thinking about an APA with about half Vienna.

MrRook · Jul 18, 2018

You can brew an all vienna beer with good results.

Brew_DD2 · Jul 18, 2018

I've gone 100% on a few occasions and brewed some superb IPAs with it.

Using Vienna

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