Hi-
In looking at creating recipes, is there a target % for each malt?
How much base malt? Crystal? etc…
I was playing around with a Pale Ale recipe and got
75% 2-row
10% Rye
10% Munich
5% Crystal 60
Im really just looking for some solid “rules of thumb”
THANKS!!
Excellent question. Here’s kind of how I formulate a grist for any recipe (in no particular order):
5-15% Crystal or caramel malts (this includes honey malt, perhaps a few others), depending on how sweet and/or caramelly you want it.
15-40% Rye, depending on how much flavor and body you want. It will also give a VERY creamy head.
5% Munich feels best for a pale ale, 10% might be a little too much. This of course is very style dependent. For example, you can use up to 100% Munich in a dunkel lager. But for most other styles, 5-10% is probably about as much Munich as you’d ever want or need.
As a related option, you can go much higher with Vienna, up to 100% as the base malt if you wanted to. It’s sort of like a milder version of Munich, or a very bready & toasty version of standard 2-row.
If you were to use any wheat, most people use anywhere from 10-60%, depending on how much wheaty flavor and creamy head you want. However I see no reason why you couldn’t take it to 100% if you wanted. Just need to add a couple pounds of rice hulls to prevent a stuck runoff and sparge.
Most other biscuit malts, roasted/black malts, aromatic, melanoidin, victory, etc. should be limited way down to 4-5% maximum, but typically you might use closer to 2-3%. These are the strongest malts and if you use too much, you might regret it.
And so, for any recipe, whatever percentage is left after all that is for your base malt, which could be 2-row, pilsner malt, Maris Otter, Vienna, etc. For any typical batch in any typical recipe, this can be anywhere from about 30% to 100%. 60 to 70% is probably most common, but it varies a lot between recipes. In fact this makes me wonder…
People don’t seem to give base malts enough credit in general. Think about it – the right base malt is the foundation of any great recipe. The base malt will truly provide a ton of flavor all by itself. But if you use too many specialty malts, it dilutes the most basic, “beery”, malty flavor of your recipe. Fundamentally I think I’d try to keep the base malt percentage >50% or even 60% as a general rule, and higher might be even better. Otherwise, all the different specialty malts may create a sort of muddled mess without legs to stand on, to the point of really not tasting much like beer anymore, but more of a worty soup with alcohol. I think a good beer needs a strong base malt presence, which gives the beer much of its “beery” character. The desire should NOT be to create a smorgasbord of every specialty malt that might be good in your recipe. I think it’s best to keep recipes as simple as possible. You can play around with 10 specialty malts over time from batch to batch, but in any one batch, you should limit your specialty malts to 2 or maybe 3 max, in my very humble opinion. On the other hand… I’m sure I have won awards with recipes having 5 or 6 specialty malts. But are all those different malts really truly needed? I am thinking not. So anyway…
:cheers:
[quote=“gosioux”]Hi-
In looking at creating recipes, is there a target % for each malt?
How much base malt? Crystal? etc…
I was playing around with a Pale Ale recipe and got
75% 2-row
10% Rye
10% Munich
5% Crystal 60
Im really just looking for some solid “rules of thumb”
THANKS!![/quote]
There are no rules. You can do whatever you want to do. Some people will tell you for instance to limit crystal to no more than 10% of the grist. But some of my most popular recipes use significantly more. The important thing is to know what every ingredient does and be sure there’s a reason for it to be there. Experiment, take notes, brew the same reciep repeatedly til you get what you want.
Check out Jamil’s “Brewing Classic Styles” - it’s a collection of award-winning recipes that will give you a good baseline for each style, then you can tweak as you learn more.
thanks for the responses!!
“Designing Great Beers” by Ray Daniels has a ton of data about percentages in a wide variety of styles from NHC competition winning recipes. It doesn’t give rules of thumb but is a way to delve in deeper into your question. Good book.
Do yourself a favor…Like I did…
Brew a smash beer and see what you get and as always take notes or EVERYTHING. I"m drinking a simcoe smash that was bottled a few weeks ago and it is awesome to me. It tastes just like one of the local craft brews I get and I"m stoked, I will brew this over and over now. Might tweak it a bit, but doubt it.
You would be surprised at how simple some of these beer recipes are.
I am brewing #107 this weekend. This might be considered an acedemic question for homebrewers, but I am debating using Vienna vs 2 row mild in an IPA. Point is, I haven’t sorted it out yet and don’t think I will in the near future. Regardless, of the 106 made, I’ve only dumped one batch.
My input: pick a proven recipe for the style you like, brew it, drink it, tweak it, relax Jack, do it again.
+1 on Designing Great Beers. Lots of very good data on % of grain used for various styles - both commercial and homebrewed.
And Although it would be madness to disregard any advice given by Denny…for those of us without as much brewing experience I would usually advise the standard norms as a starting point before adventuring out to pushing the limits on what each ingrediant might do for you.
[quote=“Brew Meister Smith”]+1 on Designing Great Beers. Lots of very good data on % of grain used for various styles - both commercial and homebrewed.
And Although it would be madness to disregard any advice given by Denny…for those of us without as much brewing experience I would usually advise the standard norms as a starting point before adventuring out to pushing the limits on what each ingrediant might do for you.[/quote]
Yep, you’ve got to pick a starting point, so that’s good advice. Just don’t assume your starting point is also your ending point!
As great a book as DGB is, remember that it’s a bit long in the tooth. Many of the recipes in it would be different given the increased access to ingredients that we have today.
[quote=“Denny”][quote=“Brew Meister Smith”]+1 on Designing Great Beers. Lots of very good data on % of grain used for various styles - both commercial and homebrewed.
And Although it would be madness to disregard any advice given by Denny…for those of us without as much brewing experience I would usually advise the standard norms as a starting point before adventuring out to pushing the limits on what each ingrediant might do for you.[/quote]
Yep, you’ve got to pick a starting point, so that’s good advice. Just don’t assume your starting point is also your ending point!
As great a book as DGB is, remember that it’s a bit long in the tooth. Many of the recipes in it would be different given the increased access to ingredients that we have today.[/quote]
Yes. And it does not have as many styles and sub styles represented as other books or databasis might have.
On the other hand it’s approach to design is its strength. And its attention to the history of beer styles is what makes it much more than just a recipe book as far as readability goes.
