Crystal Malts: Techniques

In 1977, supplies of brewing ingredients and equipment were very limited compared to what is available today. This situation started to im-prove in 1978 when homebrewing was made legal on a federal basis, but it took a while before the situation im-proved substantially. Indeed, every time I returned to England on business I took with me a sample loop and some sterilized jars. Whenever I visited a brewery I would pick up a sample of their yeast (often directly from the fermenter), bring it back to the US and culture it up to use in my own brewing. Now, I can get all kinds of strains in ready to use packs from several suppliers.

Back then someone gave me what they said was some American crystal malt, without any further details that might have been useful such as Lovi-bond (°L). This crystal seemed to be somewhat different from the British types I had been used to, and I thought it might be a good idea to make a beer entirely from this crystal malt. I did so, keeping it quite simple with an OG around 1.040 and a modest hop rate; as I remember it fermented out reasonably well and I had thought my idea had worked. Then I bottled it, waited for it to condition and tasted it. Even now a description of the taste is beyond me; all I remember it that it had such a powerful and somewhat unpleasant flavor that I could not actually drink a whole glassful. I think I still have a few bottles under a pile of debris in my garage and maybe I'll summon up the courage to try one sometime!

Roasted products are virtually identical for the same color level (°L). I shall consider here only roasted, not kilned caramel malts so I'll just use the term crystal for the sake of simplicity. You will also have seen that there are a wide range of them available, and not all of them are suited for use in brewing all beers. The table on this page will give you some idea as to which crystal malt might be suitable for the popular beer styles.

This table is not meant to be definitive or exclusive, but merely reflects my opinions (although it is based on commercial brewing practice and style definitions where possible). The point is that these roasted malts (as the table indicates) add not only color and flavor, but also add body and mouthfeel, since a proportion of the extract they yield is unfermentable. This is perhaps the main reason why British commercial brewers favor their use in brewing their regular bitter ales. Many of these are brewed at less than 4% ABV, and might well taste somewhat thin without the addition of crystal malt to the grist. The red color of 80 °L and 90 °L crystal malts also gives bitters a copper hue, which brewers like as it gives the beer more visual appeal.

In short, crystal malts are a valuable tool for the brewer and can be used in a variety of ways. This is especially true if you are brewing to taste and are not particularly concerned about producing a beer that is not exactly to style. For example, if you wanted to brew something close to a Pilsner but with a little more color you might want to add some 60 °L crystal malt instead of any of the lower roasted options. But if you did, you would use less (say 1-3%) than the 3-8% recommended in the chart for 20 °L crystal so the beer is not unbalanced in terms of flavor.

From the way I set up the table you may think I was referring only to all-grain brewing, but it can be applied just as much to extract brewing. All the extract of crystal malt can be leached out by a simple steeping technique so that these malts are very well adapted to extract brewing. But malt extracts are really concentrated worts, which is to say that pound for pound they give a higher yield of brewing extract than does grain malt. In other words, for the same original gravity you would require less malt extract than you would grain. Therefore, if you base it on weight (as in the table), then you need a higher percentage of crystal malt for an extract brew than an all-grain one. For a simple example, 6 lbs. (2.7 kg) of extract syrup in a 5-gallon (19-L) brew would give an OG of (6 x 36)/5 = 1.043, while for the same OG from all-grain you would need 9 lbs. (4.1 kg) of pale malt. If you were aiming for a 10% addition rate for the all-grain beer, that comes to 0.9 lb. (0.41 kg) of, say, 70 °L crystal malt. But you need the same weight of crystal in 5 gallons for the same color and flavor effect; that comes to (0.9/6) x 100 = 15% of the weight of malt extract.

There is another wrinkle to be considered when adding crystal malt to an extract brew. This is that some extracts have been produced with a proportion of crystal malt, and you should allow for that when making further additions. Your supplier may well not be able to tell you how much crystal was used in making the extract, so what do you do then? Well, you likely do nothing; the manufacturer knows what he was trying to do and the chances are you won't improve on his efforts by just adding more crystal. You are better off taking a straight pale extract and steeping an amount of crystal malt in order to get the color and flavor you want.

Making your choice

The best approach is to think before you do. The first point is deciding what kind of beer you want to brew before you buy any grain or extract. If you want to make something true to style, then that will decide how much crystal you'll need to get in the right color and flavor range. If you want to make something entirely your own then the business becomes more complicated. That's because you want to get some balance between alcohol level, hop bittering rates, hop character, body, and the depth of color. In other words you probably wouldn't want to use so much of 90 °L crystal malt in a pale lager that it becomes a deep red and tastes of nothing but caramel. Nor would you want to add more than a dash of 150 °L crystal in a pale ale brew where you want hop flavor and aroma to be dominant, whereas you might use a bigger proportion in a bigger beer such as an imperial stout, where you are aiming for more body and complexity. In fact, it would take me a month or two to put together a chart showing relationships between all the possible beer styles, all the available crystal malts and all the possible addition rates! That was why I drew up the table on page 87 as a framework so someone with a limited knowledge of the possibilities of crystal malts would have a starting point to work from.

The above statements may sound a little wishy-washy and not be of much help to you, so perhaps an example may be more instructive.

Example: Welsh Archer's Bitter Ale

This is going to be a modest 5-gallon (19-L) all-grain beer, let's say with an OG of 1.040, finishing at 1.010 for an ABV of 4% and with only 28 IBU. Using our gravity points notation, we'll need (40 x 5)/24 = 8.3 lbs. (3.8 kg) of pale malt for that OG ("24" is the expected yield from 1 lb. pale malt at our 65% brewhouse efficiency).

Now we want to use crystal malt to give it some extra flavor and body, and more importantly to make it copper colored rather than pale gold in hue. We can easily do this by using one of the higher roasted crystal malts which contribute a red hue. Let's opt for one at 80 °L, which will do exactly that, and from the table we could use up to 10% of this for bitter ale. However, I would see that as too much because this is a soft, gentle, and not very bitter beer. So I would prefer to go with only 5% of the weight of pale malt, which is 0.42 lb. (0.19 kg). I'll round this up to 7 oz. (0.2 kg), which will actually be 5% of the total grain bill in this case; if we used other malts we would have to take these into account in this calculation. But note that we will get extract from the crystal malt of (7/16 x 22)/5 = 1.002, so our actual OG will be 1.042. So if we want 1.040, we need 1.038 from the pale malt. That means (38 x 5)/24 = 7.9 lbs. (3.6 kg) of pale malt.

But what will this crystal addition do to the color? Well 7.9 lbs. of pale malt at 2 °L will result in a beer at (roughly) (7.9 x 2)/5 = 3 °L. Adding 7 oz. of 80 °L crystal malt will add (7/16 x 80)/5 = 7 °L, for a finishing color of 10 °L malt color units (MCU). That's still relatively pale for bitter ale but is as much as we want for such a light beer; if I felt I wanted to use more crystal malt I would up it with the lighter-roasted 60 °L product. [Do note that these color calculations do not accurately give the color of the beer; they are very approximate but are convenient for comparative purposes].

So, the final recipe that I have come up with, if you want to try it at home, is:

Welsh Archer's Bitter Ale

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.040 FG = 1.010
IBU = 28 SRM = 8 ABV = 4%

Ingredients

7.9 lbs. (3.6 kg) pale 2-row malt
7 oz. (0.2 kg) English dark crystal malt (80 °L)
7.5 AAU UK Fuggles hops (90 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 5% alpha acids)
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min.)
White Labs WLP002 (English Ale), Wyeast 1968 (London ESB Ale), or Danstar Windsor Ale yeast.

Step by Step

This is a single-step infusion mash. Mash in the grains with 3 gallons (11 L) of water to reach 151–153 °F (66–67 °C) and hold for 60 minutes. Run off and sparge with hot liquor to collect 6.5 gallons (24.6 L) of wort. Boil 90 minutes, adding the hop addition at the beginning of the boil and adding the Irish moss with 15 minutes remaining. Run off and cool to around 68 °F (20 °C). Once cool, pitch the yeast and aerate thoroughly. Ferment at 65-68 °F (18-20 °C) until kräusen falls, then rack to secondary if you so desire. Follow standard kegging or bottling procedures.

Welsh Archer's Bitter Ale

(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.040 FG = 1.010
IBU = 28 SRM = 8 ABV = 4%

Ingredients

5.3 lbs. (2.4 kg) pale liquid malt extract
7 oz. (0.2 kg) English dark crystal malt (80 °L)
7.5 AAU UK Fuggles hops (90 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 5% alpha acids)
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min.)
White Labs WLP002 (English Ale), Wyeast 1968 (London ESB Ale), or Danstar Windsor Ale yeast.

Step by Step

Steep the grains (in a muslin bag) in 2 quarts (2 L) water at 150–160 °F (65–71 °C) for 20 minutes. Remove the bag and rinse with 2 quarts (2 L) hot water. Transfer the liquid to the boiler and top off to at least 3 gallons (11 L). Then slowly stir the malt extract into the wort. Bring to a boil. Add hops and then continue to boil 90 minutes, adding the Irish moss with 15 minutes remaining. Siphon wort from the trub and top up to 5 gallons (19 L). Cool the wort to around 68 °F (20 °C). Pitch with yeast and aerate thoroughly. Ferment at 65-68 °F (18-20 °C) until kräusen falls, then rack to secondary if you desire. Follow standard kegging or bottling procedures.

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