I am learning more and more that Brewers are Gnostics. There has to be a new hidden nugget of knowledge that no one else has yet to discover in the bazillion years of brew history. There are references to support any claim and where there isn’t attack character! LOL.
FWIW: I am going to use C-60 in my upcoming Modelo-ish Vienna Lager. …and I am considering it for a planned Brown Ale.
Personally, I wouldn’t use it for the Vienna, but definitely in the brown!
I put some in my Rye APA last weekend. I hope it’s not ruined :
+1 – I really like Munich and Vienna in my Viennas. Even CaraMunich doesn’t taste right in those styles (Marzen, Vienna), at least to my palate.
Here’s where I got the idea:
Grain
Amount Item Type % or IBU
8 lbs Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 84.21 %
1 lbs Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM) Grain 10.53 %
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 5.26 %
The fella I got the recipe from says "This Vienna netted me an honorable mention in the Bjcp sponsored Michigan Renaissance Festival’s “Beer Baron’s Brew Brawl, 2009.”
And I’ve seen this 10 gal recipe:
13 lb. Vienna
5 lb. Munich
3 lb. Pilsner
1 lb. Crystal 60L
Not sure which way I am going yet but it seems C60 is used either way. Either way, I wouldn’t use more than about 5%.
I am not a big fan of using dark crystal or excessive amounts of crystal in my IPA. Sounds like this boils down to personal taste and preference.
I have heard the “crystal/oxidation” but never figured out if it was true or not.
I don’t know if it’s the search for some special new nugget as much as it is an unnecessary tribalism where one person’s opinion or experience automatically raises to the level of broadly applied truth and then the tribe must march to destroy all dissent. Then there is a foul argument between the old guard and the new in which terrible arguments and ad hominem attacks prevail.
You should have been around 17 years ago when I started trying to convince people that batch sparging was a valid technique!
Denny Conn… dispelling myths and getting crapped on because of it for 17 years…
I started brewing in a bag before the term “BIAB” was invented as far as I know. I also crushed all my malts in a blender for at least 4 years. Fortunately I didn’t show these processes to any friends at the time and thus received negligible backlash except from maybe one or two closed-minded numbskulls on the interwebs. I still today would say that the blender works just fine. Had I not received a mill as a gift I might still be using it today. Would work especially well for a 1.7-gallon batch brewer like myself, as opposed to the 3 gallons I was brewing at the time… might only take ~20 minutes to “crush” the grains instead of ~45 minutes.
??? :o ;D 8)
Crystal 60 is good stuff, though I prefer Crystal 40. But…
Peat smoked malt still sucks, unless maybe you only use 0.25-0.5 oz per 5 gallon batch. Any more than that causes terrible oxidation and astringency and acetaldehyde.
Some of us were!
Touché. LOL. Where do I get my pitch fork? LOL
Ha! That is great! Don’t forget diacetyl too!
Jamil, the host of Brew Strong, tends to speak in absolutes as if he has the final word on all things home brew. Kudos to him for having the confidence in his opinions, but I find it off-putting.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the more I know about beer, the more I need to know more about beer.
He barely lets anyone else speak, but when he does it’s so he can let everyone else express their opinions before his own so that he can trump them at the end and then they all go “ooh ahh, what an enlightened fellow, of course of course, why didn’t I think of that”. I used to respect it, but now I just think, ick. Not to mention that he’s flat wrong or making stuff up at least 33% of the time.
Sh**, I just realized that I might resemble these remarks. Dammit. :-[
Exactly! I’ve learned more in the last 5 or 6 years than I did in the first 15+, easily.
A Rob “Jethro Gump” Moline quote.
I’ve learned a lot from his shows, but I can see how the on-air arrogance could be off-putting for some. I’ve never met him in person so I have no idea what he’s like in real life.
I find his shtick funny and tend to take any absolute comments with a grain of salt. I guess I’m also one of those people that tends to think the word “expert” should always be in quotes (except when referring to myself of course).
So glad that someone besides me is old enough to remember!