What recommendations do you have? I have been using different combinations of pilsner, vienna, and munich over the last few batches.
Right now I am planning on Golden Promise but have little experience with it.
It all dependsds one the target flavor you want.
Simpsons Golden Promise is about 2L, and has a very nice clean rich malt taste, little toasty flavor. Couple that with certain hops, and you can have a very tasty beer. Founders has sold a lot of Mosaic Promise of late.
I vote Golden Promise or Rahr 2-row.
Voted for the Rahr 2 row, but have not used any Simpson’s products to date so it was easy to pick one for me
Oh I’m sorry, I thought this was America.
I’ll vote for Rahr, since they are local.
Going with base malts available at my LHBS. I believe they also have rahr pilsner but I think that would likely be too neutral on its own which was sort of my feeling about the rahr two row.
Maybe I will just go with whatever gets the most votes. Cast your vote now!
I vote Vienna or Golden Promise @ 100%. Either would be excellent.
Thanks Jon. My last version was 95% vienna and 5% carahell so I think I am going to try something other than vienna this go around.
Cool. And even though it’d be a lot more in the British bitter camp, an all Maris Otter beer has great toasty malt character.
I’m sipping my recent bitter, and I’m thinking that next time I’m going to either try Golden Promise as my base malt (with some medium crystal) or a 50/50 blend of Golden Promise/Maris Otter. I love Maris Otter, but this beer needs to be filled out a tad bit more, I think it’s a little too toasty. Needs a bit more “normal” malt character IMO.
FWIW, Briess Pale Ale malt isn’t bad, I don’t get the bad rap it gets. But I wouldn’t use it 100% in a beer, it needs a little something else even more than Maris Otter IMO.
I do all my SMaSH beers with gooden promise and have had excellent results
My vote was for Golden Promise. I just brewed a SMaSH amber using 100% Golden Promise, some of it being homemade crystal malt made from GP. I wish I could tell you if it was any good, but the keg kicked in record time at my 6-year old’s birthday party lol.
Damn, they are starting younger and younger these days.
Out of curiosity what were the hops and yeast?
For a 3-gallon batch: 40 IBU of Magnum at 60 minutes and 1 oz of Caliente whirlpooled for about 40 minutes at 120F. US-05 yeast.
On a side note - I had estimated my homemade Crystal to be somewhere between C40 and C60, but the beer came out way darker and toasty/caramelly than I had anticipated. It was probably more like C80 crossed with Special Roast. The sediment-loaded first sample was “just OK” to me, but the keg kicked in no time and I got rave reviews from all the parents. They also kicked the keg of NE IPA that was clearly labeled “very bitter” and never really dropped the harsh over-dryhopped “raw hop” character that I was waiting to fade. In the end it was a win-win - the parents loved it and I freed up two kegs of beer I didn’t really want to drink a full keg of.
Couple quick comments…
unless you start with green, unkilned malt, you’re not really making crystal malt at home.
For my own tastes, a 100% base malt APA, no matter what kind of malt, turns out kinda boring. I prefer the depth of flavor from a blend of malts. If you’re concerned about crystal hiding too much flavor, try the new Great Western Sacchra malts. Kinda like a cross between crystal and Munich.
I don’t think I can get great western from my LHBS. I have been considering trying Patagonia crystal which they do carry after hearing good things.
I think this go around I will just stick with base malt since it will be a hop forward APA. In future iterations, I will likely add some crystal back.
Those sound like nice malts. I’ll be looking for them.