What is crystal malt

These malts are used in many beer styles, from pale ales to porters, and are the most widely used type of specialty grain. You can use crystal malt no matter what type of homebrewer you are — extract, partial mash or all-grain. Adding crystal malt is a common way to add a sweet flavor to beer. The sweetness of crystal malt has distinct caramel tones to it. For this reason, crystal malts are sometimes called caramel malts.

Crystal malt sweetness is a key characteristic of several styles of beer, most notably in pale ales and related styles.

Crystal malts also add color to your beer. Crystal malts are rated according to their color depth. Pale malts, by comparison, are usually rated between 1. On the low end of their color range they look only slightly darker than pale malts.

As you move up the color range they appear more reddish. The darkest crystal malts are nearly brown. The color of the crystal malt is a function of how it was prepared. Crystal malts are made from barley grain in a process similar to that of making pale malts. As with pale malts, the grains are steeped and germinated. As a result, the starch interiors of the barley grains are broken into sugars by amylase enzymes in the barley. After stewing, the grains are kilned. Kilning dries the grain, darkens the husk and caramelizes some of the sugar inside.

Crystal malt is used in many styles of beer. The amount of crystal malt used varies with the style of beer. Pale ales, bitters or ESBs may contain up to 20 percent crystal malt.

For example, a beer may be made with ten pounds of grain, two pounds of which are crystal malt. Lagers such as Octoberfests or Vienna lagers may contain up to 15 percent crystal malt.

Darker ales, such as porters and stouts, may also contain crystal malt along with more darkly roasted grains. See the box at right for some helpful guidelines to using crystal malt. The more crystal malt used in a recipe, the darker the color. Since crystal malts are commonly rated in degrees Lovibond, you can calculate how much color you are adding to your beer. HCU stands for homebrew color units. Measuring actual SRM requires the use of a spectrophotometer.

HCUs only measure the amount of grain color added to your beer. You can kiln at lower temperatures for longer to achieve mellow character or high and faster for more roasty and bitter character.

Experimentation is key. Making your own crystal malt is a fun process and you learn a lot about malting in general, it does take time though and patience, be prepared to do a bit of trial and error before achieving just what you want.

Can you post a link to that? Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Welcome to Home Brew Answers. I hope you find what you are looking for here! Read More Here. Types of Crystal or Caramel Malt Crystal malt : Depending on where you are or who you are the term Crystal and Caramel can be used interchangeably, they are the same thing. Simple Home Brewing Water Treatment.

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The temperatures and times used for the different products are a closely guarded secret, although both vary in order to achieve the different colours and flavours that make up our extensive range of cara and crystal malts.

Only when a member of our roast house team is happy with the product, with a sample taken from each batch and analysed, is the drum opened and the grain rapidly cooled, giving us the finished, crystallised malt. Back in the early-to-mid s, Peter Simpson, alongside then Roast House Production Manager Chris Trumpess and his team, set out to produce the best crystal malt possible. But if you want to get consistently high crystallisation in the final product, you need consistency in the raw material.

As a result, we set tight specifications for the barley that we grow because as we know that impacts the flavour of the final product. We outlined all of this in the earlier paragraphs but, to add, we consider every step of the malting process — not just the roasting phase — to be equally important in order to achieve the quality that we strive towards.

The confidence we have in our processes, along with our equipment see below , has also allowed us to innovate and be at the forefront of malt research and development, with the launch in recent years of Simpsons DRC , Red Rye Crystal , Golden Naked Oats and Crystal T With the freedom to choose what we invest in due to being a family-owned independent business, we have just bought the most modern equipment available with the ability to control the stew and cure to within specific temperature ranges.

But, as stated in bullet point No. Members of our roast house team carefully manage the closing minutes of each batch of malt, endeavouring to give us the tightest colour range possible between batches, with maximum permitted ranges.