I have limited experience with a wide variety of grain types. I am looking for something that can be used in small quantities to noticeably add some malt sweetness and perhaps a bit of color.
Basically I am trying to balance a pale ale without changing the recipe drastically. My first thought is some aromatic malt.
Any ideas?
Munich malt?
I love light munich (10L). I use it as part of the base malt and it adds a ton of malty bready sweetness to the finished beer. I use anywhere from 10% to 100% to get a slight color/sweetness addition all the way to a big ol’ malt bomb.
There is about 10% in my kolsch recipe and it adjusts color just perfectly with just a tiny bit of added malt complexity.
About 30% in porter helps prevent a too thin roasty thing.
100% makes a thick syrupy old ale that turns to plums and black cherries with age.
Yeah my first thought was munich but doing that would mean ovehauling the whole recipe. That may be necessary but I would like to give it another try with minimal tweaks.
I have made a Munich Smash so am aware of what it can add to a beer. Maybe Munich 20L so I don’t have to use as much?
Maybe a small amount of CaraMunich? Like a half pound or so in a 5 gallon batch would add a bit of color and malty sweetness while staying subtle.
This is what I was thinking.
+1 to Munich, Caramunich, or Caravienne as well. Maybe even a few oz of honey malt.
I like the idea of caramunich. The recipe doesn’t have typical crystal malt but does have golden naked oats which are apparently a “huskless oat crystal malt”
You can also add Melanoiden malt, but be careful as a little goes a long way.
If you aren’t interested in making big tweaks to the recipe then you might be able to get more malt character out of adjusting your water profile to showcase the malt.
good call. you can even test this in the glass as calcium chloride dissolves almost as well as gypsum in beer.