Blending Base Malts

[william.heinric]

I've spoken with my Cargill rep about this already, and I'm going to try it, but I'd like to know about anybody else's experience with using some European malt to beef up American 2-Row.

My thought is 25% EuroPils (as a total of all base malt). It is for an IPA that is lacking malt character, and I'd like to keep it light and bright. Any thoughts on this would be killer.

Cheers,
Bill

[Graydon]

I have done this many times in the past. I enjoy beers that take advantage of having multiple base malts. I would use three.

Graydon

[william.heinric]

How about 5? I'm just kidding.

Just for the sake of curiosity, what sort of ratios were you using for your bases? I don't want to go crazy here, and the stuff that I'm blending in costs more than the base I'm going to use.

Thanks,
Bill

[brewmaster 2011]

Have you tried using carapils from weyermann?

[Graydon]

I did an IPA in Palm Springs that had 50% GW 2-row, 25% GW pale, and 25% Pils malt. I was trying to get more interesting flavor in a beer that had very little or no specialty malts.

Graydon

[william.heinric]

All right, Graydon, I'm going to give four a shot.

Here are my perspective blend ratios (these are all Cargill base malts):

2-Row - 49.2%
IdaPils - 16.4%
EuroPils - 16.4%
GPils - 18.0%

The percentages are based off of the prices, bag sizes, and my order size as much as anything else, so keep that in mind.

As to the Carapils, I haven't tried it, but I'm trying to get malt character without adding sweetness. I guess that I'm participating in the hop water arms race.

Bill

[einhorn]

Why not a good portion Munich as base malt?

[Graydon]

Einhorn,

I can only speak for myself but what I was trying to achieve was malt flavor, that would stand up to more hops (IBU's) without being distinctive. I was making a Hop Bomb with lingering pleasant bitterness. Think of an 16 plato bitters with 65 IBU's, and Munich just did not fit. What I got was a beer with just enough malt sweetness to stand up to the hops without a caramel or Hi Dry'ed character. I liked it but that was my beer. You will have to make yours, and I would love to taste it when your done.

Graydon

[einhorn]

I make my IPA with 40% Munich (also 16 P and 68 IBUs) and it has great malt base flavor. I will send you samples in a few weeks after bottling.

Good luck!

[william.heinric]

Thanks for everybody's input on this. I think that light hop juice is the goal on this one, and hopefully I'm on the right track. I'm going to go with 25-30% EuroPils into 2-Row, and hopefully that'll give this beer that little bit of malt character that I'm missing right now.

Also, Mike and Ron at Cargill have been great resources; I recommend them if you're looking for good guys and good malts.

Cheers,
Bill

[bh10]

Why not use some German Vienna? I use 15-20% in all my IPA's, really helps balancing the beer and not making straight hop bombs. I dont think you're going to get the malt characteristics you want with just Pils Malt.

[yap]

I'll second the notion of adding a little Munich I to build a little malt character....

[Matt Dog]

A little Wyerman Melanoidan goes a long way to adding a bit of depth to an American 2 Row.

[porter]

We use a little Weyermann Rye malt and sometimes Rahr White or Weyermann Dark (red) wheat in addition to the Rahr 2-row to add more depth to the malt character.
I also second the use of Vienna in IPA's. My problem with blending base malts is that the differences are subtle. If you are making hop juice, you probably won't even be able to tell unless you use something distinctive like Maris Otter.

Mmmmm, hops...