I have been playing with trying to get the malt right for these beers for quite some time. I found the more I tightened up my system the more the malts I was using tasted wrong. Vima was giving me way to much fresh dough, even at 5%. Muma was adding a weird slight sour twang, along with a muddy flavor, and it was not what I was tasting in the beers I love. We had always previously joked about a super pima, so thats where this name came from. I did a bunch of looking into things, and determined that I wanted to blend pima with as similar a malt like it I could. I know Steve looked into blending it will pale ale malt, so I started there, but didn’t have to go far, because it was a home run.
Enter the pima/pale ale super pima blend®. Which is the pima of your choice(I use Barke exclusivly), and Weyermann’s pale ale malt. Working with Big monk, we came up with a really easy way to blend these malts( more on that coming soon). Personally I use a 50/50 blend of the 2 and am blown away with the results. Its like pima on steroids, with none of the other flavors I was getting with the addition of the other malts. The pale ale malts lend amazing foam properties as well.
My Pilsner is simply a 50/50 blend. Here is a sample that is currently fermenting for color
Here is a sample of an Export Helles with a 50/50 blend:
The color of the beers with the blend is pretty much spot on when comparing to commercial examples as are the malt flavors.
Interesting. I made something that I called an “American Premium” lager earlier this year. I used 50% Barke Pils (which I love and will probably use exclusively going forward) along with 50% Rahr pale ale malt. That made up the “base malt” and then I used a pound of flaked corn and some carafoam (4 ounces) as well. My aim was to make a light lager with an American twist but clearly not a clone of Bud Light. I was blown away by how good it was and the splitting of the base malt was done as a way to make the beer more “American” as opposed to having too much continental pilsner character. I did it completely off the top of my head and I’ll probably do it again coming up here shortly with another lager. How about Barke + Golden Promise or Maris Otter?
Gonna keep that in mind. The helles makes sense, but I’m a little surprised at the 50/50 with a pils. I’m definitely gonna try it. Thanks for the info.
Another question… were you finding that a beer made with 100% pilsner malt was “too much of something” or that it was “boring” and one-dimensional? Since pale ale malts seem to have a relatively neutral character but with some good depth, I could see it working with Pilsner malt.
Edit: in my opinion and the opinion of many brewers blending different base malts is a good way to add complexity and depth of flavor without the cloying sweetness one risk getting using specialty malts such as crystal/caramel malts.
I’ve been using a blend of Pils and either pale or MO for a while in my Belgians, but I’ve never thought to try it in my lagers. I will definitely be giving this a try soon.
A couple of years back, while reading some older recipes, they were calling for Hell/Helles malt, and that one translation for Hell is Pale. I have been using some in my Helles, but haven’t used it in the Pils yet. Probably will as I go LODO and Brewtan B.
Think of it as modified Pilsner malt. It becomes your Pilsner malt in recipes that use it. It’s an effort to try and match the custom spec’d Pilsner malt being used by certain German macro breweries.
In a Dunkel it is also advantageous to blend Munich Malts to achieve a desired color as well.
4-5 EBC for Pima/Pale blends and 17-18 EBC for a Munich blend should be a good start.
