Any experience with malted corn and recommendation on a source? Looking to try it in place of the corn grits in an American bock recipe.
Does malted corn require a cereal mash or can it be used like flaked corn. I found corn grits to have a superior flavor to flaked but the extra cereal mash is daunting. Would like to skip it if possible.
Look at Sugar Creek malt in Indiana.
Here’s another:
Does not require gelatinization. Add it right to the mash.
I find cereal mashing pretty easy and not too time consuming. Start a normal mash at a beta rest and at the same time start a cereal mash with the adjunct and some malt, rest for 20 minutes, boil 15 minutes and then add it to the main mash to bring it to alpha temps.
It’s not too hard, it smells great, it improves extraction and it doesn’t take that much longer.
Denny and Drew mentioned using it in a Cream Ale, I believe. Denny can chime in - I don’t recall any cereal mashing, I think it is mashed like any barley malt…
Yeah, it’s malted, right? So no cereal mashing necessary. Drew used it to make a cream ale and it was…interesting. I don’t know if I’d recognize it as a cream ale. Very unique flavor, unlike any corn beer I’ve ever tasted. My takeaway was don’t think you can just sub it for corn, because it’s so different.
Supposedly, you can make a 100% malted corn beer – no spit needed.
Listen to Stan Heironomus’s presentation on native beers from this years HomebrewCon. Evidence of malting carn has been found.
I would definitely imagine the malting would change its character. Seems like it would make an interesting candidate for whiskey distillation. That said, usually when there is an uncommon brewing ingredient like this there is a reason why it hasn’t become popular. IOW it has been tried before.
I wonder if this is why there have been reports of malted Bloody Butcher tasting different than flaked corn, rather than primarily being due to the varietal. I have a few pounds of malted BB that I’ll be using soon, so I’ll be interested to see what the flavor difference turns out to be.
That’s exactly my thinking. Malted produces a malted flavor, right? Think of barley malt as opposed to flaked barley. Very different, just like BB is very different than flaked corn. That’s why I think it isn’t a replacement for flaked corn, but needs its own recipes. The cream ale Drew made with it tasted nothing like a cream ale.
And of course Bloody Butcher may not taste the same as another maltster Corn Malt, and Corn Malt shouldn’t be assumed to be a 1:1 replacement for flaked corn, nor can we assume it plays the same with other malts and adjuncts and hops…
Probably a good start would be 10% to see what it brings, then adjust the dial as needed. There certainly can be a place in the homebrewer’s brewhouse for the clean sweetness of malted corn if one is willing to tackle the learning curve.
Or a very small batch with a very high percentage — to really key in on that ingredient.
Thanks for the info! I really wanted to try it but sounds like I should steer clear for my brewing goals as far as corn is concerned
All very interesting! Maybe I should stick to the corn grits and cereal mash.
It depends on what you want. If you want more of a trad corn flavor, the grits are the way to go.
My opion is that it is a fresher flavor. Flakers are heated by the rollers, then they set at the LHBS, then they get mashed, so heated twice.
I usually use 20-30% when I use flaked corn in lagers. I’ll probably use the same amount when I first try out BB and see what happens.
I love the idea of Corn Malt in an American Lager. I would definitely be interested to hear how you get on with it, whenever you try it out.
Just one data point. The craft maltster that I buy most of my grains from puts a recommended brewing usage on their Corn Malt at <20% (<51% for distilling).