Exotic Malts Trials (That's to Say, Trials on Hitherto Untried and Untasted Malts)

[An Ankoù]

Open to all, Not just a record of my experiments.

What do you make of this?

This very special roasted malt offers a great advantage: Château Black Of Black gives the beer the flavour and aroma typical of the traditional Black malt without intensifying the beer’s colour. Imparts well-balanced and agreeable roasted notes to the finished beer.
Now you can brew an amber-coloured beer with a more pronounced roasted character, which had not been possible until Castle Malting® created its unique technology for producing Château Black Of Black.

Average ebc around 800 making it a lightish chocolate malt, but it claims to have the roast flavour of Black Malt. Only one thing for it and that's to brew up a batch and see what it tastes like. trouble is, I'll have to brew up a batch with chocolate malt, too, to see whether there's any difference.
I'd normally use these darker roasted malts in a mixture of dark, roasted malts in a stout or a porter, but I want it to be the only roast malt so I can identify its features more readily. Here's the recipe I'm proposing: OG 1050 : IBUs 40 : 80% Pale ale malt (Crisp's Best) : 15% Caramalt : 5% Black of Black (the maximum recommended). Bittered with fuggles. No late hops. Fermented with a fairly neutral yeast like CML Beòir of Lallamand Nottingham or something like that. I'll do the same with 5% Hook Head Chocolate malt. By the way, Castle also do a chocolate malt of average ebc 1000, but I haven't got any.
Any observations on the recipe, gratefully received.
One thing I need to do is find the wherewithal to brew 5 litre batches. My normal stovetop size is 12 litres, but I don't want gallons of these experimental beers hanging around.

When I've done this I've got Château Café and Café Light to play with at 470 and 250 ebc respectively. I'll use the same recipe.
A quick googling shows a number of Castle products supplies in the UK. One in Rotherham has quite a lot of their stuff, alsothehomebrewcompany stock Castle Maltings Stuff as does Autobrasseur in France and Mr Malt in Italy.

 

[An Ankoù]

Malt Trials Continued
Already brewed batches of lager with Plumage Archer and with Hanà, two heritage malts from Crisp's. They're both conditioning and lagering and should be ready for a taster round about the end of July.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

One thing I need to do is find the wherewithal to brew 5 litre batches. My normal stovetop size is 12 litres, but I don't want gallons of these experimental beers hanging around.

Yeah, that's the problem with testing malts, unless you cold-infuse them separately, they mean a separate mash/boil which all gets a bit of a faff. Comparing yeast is much easier, just split the final wort into gallon buckets. Look forward to hearing how you get on though.

To set some expectations, from talking to a commercial brewer who's used Plumage Archer, don't expect it to be wildly different from Otter, but the commercial lagers I've had with Hana have been terrific.

The last beer I made used some of the melanoidin wheat that Crisp were handing out at the last Brewcon, unfortunately I left it in the fermenter too long and it turned into more of an Old Ale, so you can't really see what the MW is adding. Turned out as a really nice beer though.

 

[An Ankoù]

Yeah, that's the problem with testing malts, unless you cold-infuse them separately, they mean a separate mash/boil which all gets a bit of a faff. Comparing yeast is much easier, just split the final wort into gallon buckets. Look forward to hearing how you get on though.

To set some expectations, from talking to a commercial brewer who's used Plumage Archer, don't expect it to be wildly different from Otter, but the commercial lagers I've had with Hana have been terrific.

The last beer I made used some of the melanoidin wheat that Crisp were handing out at the last Brewcon, unfortunately I left it in the fermenter too long and it turned into more of an Old Ale, so you can't really see what the MW is adding. Turned out as a really nice beer though.

I made a SMaSH lager with Plumage Archer and EKGs and had a taster last night. It worked well; the malt is as light as a low colour malt and while I'd read somewhere it left a sweet taste, I didn't get any of that. Looking forward to trying it again some time in August. Haven't tried the Hanà yet. Might have a crafty one this evening. I like to leave my lagers 3 months, at least, in the bottle.
Melanoidin wheat malt sounds interesting. Munton's, I see, claim it improves stability and helps prevent oxydation as well as add something to the flavour. I didn't know melanoidins did that.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Gah, thinking about it, it is Munton not Crisp, apologies for any confusion.

It certainly oxidised in my fermenter, but who knows how much worse it would have been without the MW. As it was, it came out just "Goldilocks" for an old ale so I'm happy with it.

 

[Covrich]

If you cold steep it, it will probably be a lighter colour aswell but still get the flavours.

 

[An Ankoù]

Cold steeping's a good idea, but I've still got to boil. I've got a couple of half size cooler boxes so I think I'll just do two at a time. As all the other factors are constant, there's nothing to get mixed up.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Melanoidin wheat malt sounds interesting. Munton's, I see, claim it improves stability and helps prevent oxydation as well as add something to the flavour. I didn't know melanoidins did that.

Perhaps of interest to @DocAnna and others striving for low oxygen