Has anyone tried this grain? My local homebrew shop started to sale this. Supposedly Briess’ answer to Golden Promise.
Anyway I used this in a recipe I’ve used several times, substituting this grain for Maris Otter. The result is that I am off in my OG by about 25 points. I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong and this is one of possible explanations.
I’d be more than willing to guess that using a different base malt would result in such a large change in sugar extraction. I’d check other critical pieces of the puzzle- temps, volumes, grain crush, and water chemistry. Good luck figuring it out.
I have not used it but I see the SRM is 3.8 which means the diastatic power will be slightly lower than other base malts of lower color.
From the information they show I would be inclined to add a higher diastatic malt to help with conversions of something else if I was intending to use a bunch of other malt with no diastatic power. They say this can be used up to 100%, but they also say limit to 20% as an addition. Without even looking at the detailed specs, that tells me it won’t convert a bunch of roast malt on its own. And I could be completely wrong there. I would probably add equal parts of all the other high SRM malts or no diastatic malts, along with two row or pills in order to help convert those roast malts. I don’t expect something roasted to 3.8 L to have the same diastatic power of something at 1.8 or 2.2.
Keep in mind that Golden Promise is a barley variety, not a type of malt. That’s why there’s such a difference between Crisp and Simpson’s Golden Promise. They both use Golden Promise malt, but they treat it differently and the malts taste different, despite being the same variety. The maltster makes the difference.
The data sheet at https://www.brewingwithbriess.com/wp-content/uploads/documents/Briess-PISB-Heritage-Gold-040424.pdf says that the diastatic power is 110 Lintner. That is plenty high and doesn’t need anything else to aid in conversion, even with an equal amount of non-diastatic malt. The page for base malts says “75% yield on grind” for the Heritage Gold, which is a bit low, but when you click on Product Details you get a data sheet that says Coarse Grind and Fine Grind extract are 80.5% and 82% which are both fine. I doubt that the malt is your problem, unless it had been badly stored or was quite stale. Coming up 25 points short is a lot.
110 is higher than I would have guessed, and that’s what I was doing since I hadn’t opened the pdf… I expected it to be close to Goldpils Vienna (a malt I use a lot of), and that is listed at 95. While I’ve used it as 100% of a grist, I don’t think I’d trust it to convert a large amount of other non diastatic malt. And maybe I’m overcautious.
After I gave this more thought, I did last June purchase a sack of base malt, also “on sale”, and had horrible efficiency from it. 25 gravity points?? … yea… Was a different maltster though, and I have never purchased Briess malt that didn’t perform exactly as expected.
Supposedly you only need 40 Lintner to convert completely, so many Munich malts in the range of 50-60 are OK by themselves. I admit that I am nervous about that and often add 1 lb of wheat or Pilsner malt or something with very high diastatic power to reach a value of 75 or so for the batch just to be sure. I just did an Altbier with 6 lbs of Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner, which only has a diastatic power of 75 L, and 2 lbs of Munich and 1 lb of Munich 2. I added some wheat malt to increase the diastatic power for the batch to 70 L and I had no problems with conversion. I hit my estimated post-mash gravity within a point.
40 Lintner might work if my name was Anheuser-Busch, or if I was doing a stepmash and starting low and later raising the temp, which I rarely do. But I’ve always been skeptical of how much safety margin I need because of my process. I heat the water for an infusion, dump it in the mash tun (tall 10g cooler), and then stir in the grain. My strike water is typically between 168 to 171 and I’ve often wondered how much enzyme gets denatured before all the grain is in and the temperature is down to the proper infusion temp. Other than my one bag of pale base malt from last year, I’ve never had a problem. But that stuff was just like the op is describing.
Henceforth, I refuse to purchase grain on sale, beer kits on sale, or hops on sale.
Everybody’s favorite British malt, Maris Otter has a DP of 65 Lintner. I’ve used it with Flaked Corn in some bitter recipes, just check the weighted average of the DP for the total grist, if it’s 40 or over it should all convert.
Those were infusion mashes. I’ve done 100% Dark Munich Dunkels with step mashes.
Thankfully the beers I brew have plenty of High DP base malts. I would be worried if I tried to cut the DP close and expected a mash to convert completely. I’ve had inexplicable drops in efficiency when there was no reason for it. I’d hate to tempt fate.
That’s actually pretty common across the board. Take a look at any domestic Munich and it will be dramatically higher SRM for the same roast description. European will be seven, domestic is 12 to 15. European is 12 for the dark, domestic is 25 let’s say. The same thing for Vienna, and I don’t know the reasoning for that.
Are you sure you’re not comparing Lovibond vs EBC or something like that? Briess Munich is a little high at 10L, but Great Western is 7.9L. Briess Vienna is 3.5 L and Weyermann lists a range of 2.7-3.8 Lovibond for their Munich. Swaen is 4-5L for theirs. There are differences from maltster to maltster for sure, but I’ve never noticed a drastic trend across the board for domestic vs European maltsters.
I don’t mean every malt they make, but compare say Weyermann Munich and Vienna to Briess. Light Munich, dark Munich, both maltsters have a malt described as light or dark. But the domestic light is comparable to the import dark.
Bonlander Munich (light) is 10L vs Weyermann Munich 1 at 5-6.9. Munich 2 (dark) is 8-10 vs Aromatic malt (Briess dark) @ 20L. I do believe it was Dr Axel Goehler who noted the Eu maltsters kiln those malts lighter than US ones, and gave reasons for it, though I can’t recall the reasons. Might have been tradition. It just happens that those are the two brands I use most, and more than once my “inventory” hasn’t crossed over well when I needed to make a substitution.
Aromatic malt isn’t the same as dark Munich. It’s comparable to Melanoiden malt. Bonlander seems to split the difference between a Light and a Dark Munich.