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Max percentage of crystal malts for ales.


The Captain!!

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26 minutes ago, Beerlust said:

I don't think I've ever bought the can. Why would I? 

Lusty, I too once thought as you do. The Mexican and Canadian kits were the ones I would never ever even think of buying.

Then I tried the Mexican kit as the base of an American Brown Ale and it was delicious. Certainly nothing like Corona! And for that matter the Pale Ale I've been drinking based on that kit is great too. Just think of it as pre-bittered light LME. 

Cheers, 

John

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1 hour ago, porschemad911 said:

Lusty, I too once thought as you do. The Mexican and Canadian kits were the ones I would never ever even think of buying.

Then I tried the Mexican kit as the base of an American Brown Ale and it was delicious. Certainly nothing like Corona! And for that matter the Pale Ale I've been drinking based on that kit is great too. Just think of it as pre-bittered light LME. 

I understand where you are coming from John. 😉

I have brewed the Coopers DIY recipe: Helga's Cool Kolsch using the Canadian Blonde as the base so have some understanding of it & it worked well for that recipe. If I was going to make an American Brown Ale, I'd probably find a kit a bit closer to it's base flavours or use an unhopped LME & spend the extra 30mins in a boil & bitter it myself.

I notice you primarily use the Cerveza kit with your 1/2 volume craft sized brews where the lower IBU is the best choice as a gap of 5 IBU between the APA kit at full volume then widens to 10 IBU which is substantial.

2 hours ago, The Captain1525230099 said:

I think that’s a challenge @Beerlust

For what? 🤔

Cheers,

Lusty.

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1 hour ago, Beerlust said:

I notice you primarily use the Cerveza kit with your 1/2 volume craft sized brews where the lower IBU is the best choice as a gap of 5 IBU between the APA kit at full volume then widens to 10 IBU which is substantial.

Yep, I only do approx. 11l brews. For larger brews or styles where base bitterness doesn't matter quite as much (eg DIPA) the OS Lager kit is better value, and all base malt (but kilned a bit darker).

Interestingly, the APA kit doesn't have wheat malt in it any more, only barley malt is listed on the ingredients label. 

Cheers, 

John 

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18 hours ago, porschemad911 said:

Interestingly, the APA kit doesn't have wheat malt in it any more, only barley malt is listed on the ingredients label. 

I confess to being a little shocked that Coopers aren't producing these brew can recipes closer to commercial makeups.  😕

This probably has a lot to do with why many customers often state that the taste from the specialised beer kits are "not quite the same" as the commercial stuff when they brew them, because as you've now enlightened us, their makeup is in fact "not quite the same". 😉

Cheers,

Lusty.

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18 hours ago, porschemad911 said:

For larger brews or styles where base bitterness doesn't matter quite as much (eg DIPA) the OS Lager kit is better value, and all base malt (but kilned a bit darker).

It's certainly the one I use for the majority of partial-mash beers I like to brew.   The can costs me $12. That's 1.7kg of plain light extract and some base bittering.  About $4 cheaper than I can buy a can of unhopped extract for!  There's enough wriggle room remaining with the base IBU's to accommodate any additional bittering my brews need.  It's only on the rare occasions when I want to brew something lighter that the IBU & EBC of this tin proves to be too high.    😎 

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  • 1 month later...

So I had a glass of the Captains Choice Bro pale ale last night. 

First thoughts were I’m not really into this much crystal, but mouthfeel was definitely heavier than I’m use to and the bitterness did balance the over all sweetness. Still a little under carbed so I turned up the co2 a little. 

I’m not disappointed in the beer, its definitely nice, it was a good experiment and happy I’ve done it. 

Would I brew it again, yep but probably take a third of the crystal out. 

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58 minutes ago, The Captain1525230099 said:

Would I brew it again, yep but probably take a third of the crystal out. 

I too had concluded that too much crystal aint all that great - I found the resultant sweetness to be rather cloying.  I since dialled back the quantities I was using at the time.  One small issue that created however was a loss in colour depth and for a number of my recipes I then felt I had to compensate with small additions of a dark malt - usually roasted barley, just for minor colour tweaks.  I'm probably being overly pedantic really, and if it wasn't for my slight OCD to try conform to BJCP colour guidelines for the style I was brewing I probably wouldn't bother with these trivial colour adjustments and simply accept whatever the colour ends up being is the colour it is!  😎

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Yep, I don’t care too much about colour really. It’s not like I’m entering comps or anything. Sometimes I’ll pop some black malt in for colour but not too often.

@BlackSands, have you ever had a Epic Pale Ale? That’s what this recipe is from. 

Its a nice beer, maybe not to my tastes probably. 

The cascade is something else in this beer. Quite layered.

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I don't care about colour in terms of style guides but I do have preferences for each style I brew. I use 300g medium crystal in my pales because I like the flavour it gives but it also gives the colour I like in those beers. English ales I like a bit more toffee/caramel so I'll reduce the medium crystal and add a bit of Caraaroma to get that flavour. I like them a bit more of a deep copper colour which those malts in the amounts I use don't provide so a little black malt goes in as well to darken it a bit to the colour I want. 

Same with lagers, they're too pale for me with only the main malts so I add a little black malt to them as well to achieve a more golden colour without affecting flavour. 

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10 minutes ago, The Captain1525230099 said:

 

@BlackSands, have you ever had a Epic Pale Ale? That’s what this recipe is from. 

Yup!  Epic produce some great beers - especially if you're a hop-head!  One of my favourites of theirs was a DIPA called "Hop Zombie".  But at around $9 - $10 a bottle it's a VERY rare treat!  😮

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 11/21/2018 at 1:18 PM, The Captain1525230099 said:

I’m going to give this one a crack, I’ll get the weyermann carapils and Bairds caramalt as that’s what they talked about. Thinking of subbing the golden promise though for B.B. Ale malt. 

The hopping schedule is as follows for this particular beer. The amounts are worked out on 7.5% AA, so will adjust levels once I know the AA amount of the cascade I have in the freezer.

DAB8DB9D-7B45-43A8-AA74-7DCE7D204FC9.png

Did you dry hop 70g of cascade for 5 days x 2 @The Captain1525230099  ??

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