Crystal numbers?

[Highlander]

Hi all,

After sampling some Alaskan Amber I'm thinking about a clone.
I've looked at this recipe http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/alaskan ... ost1045160
but i'm not sure what they mean when they say:
crystal 60 and crystal 80.

I've only ever used just plain crystal.

Any help much appricated.

Highlander

[GrowlingDogBeer]

The numbers relate to how dark the Malt is roasted. Normally when you buy Crystal Malt it has its EBC number on it and that's the one you are interested in. Have a look at the Malt Miller site, he has various different Crystal Mats with different EBC values.

[GARYSMIFF]

skeksis and gelfling is dark Crystal

[Blue Sky]

Just a 'heads up' ...there are two commonly used malt/beer colour specifications... over here we use EBC but the Americans use SRM (>>Wiki Clicky<<).

Certainly all the Yank recipes I've seen use SRM; The Malt Miller specifies his malts in EBC, so you'll need to convert to get the right colour ...try this web page >>Malt Color Calculator<<

E.g. Crystal 30 = 30SRM = 60EBC, etc.

Unfortunately - but not unsurprisingly - we in the UK only seem to have access to a few of the many Crystal colours (Malt Miller only stock 4 but I believe there are at least 10) so your beer may end up being a little lighter or darker than specified ...shouldn't deter from it's quality tho, unless you're entering a competition

[Manx Guy]

Hi,

All good advice and I can only repeat what others have said...

While its nice to get beer colour right but its not an exact science...

Using some beer software like Beer engine or beer Alchemy (Which is also avaialble in iphone/iPad -I'm a recent convert to ipad myself!)

You can tweak the figures and decide on the best balance between colour and flavour.

I recently brewed a bitter that was identical to one I'd done earlier with one main difference.

I used (less) dark crystal to get the same colour as when using standard crystal...
There is a noticiable but subtle difference between the two, I'm not sure which I prefer though...

However to my mind malt is there to balance the hops in my Pale Ales (my fav style)

But it plays a bigger role in other styles I brew from time to time - like Porters & stouts etc.

I've made one (extract-before I went AG) US amber ale and I got pretty darn close with the colour using British Crystal malts...
The beer tasted good too!

Also remember that the boil can add colour but also wort tends to lighten after fermentation too....

Boffins or a book can explain these complex processes far better than I can...




Good luck & happy brewing!

[Highlander]

Thanks for all the info.
I had a guess it was colour related, but couldn't see how it tied in with the EBC quoted for the different crystals available.
I hadn't figured it was a different scale. I'll plug in the recipe and see if i can adjust it for what I can source.
Highlander

[Fuggled Mind]

I brewed an American amber ale not long ago and I had the same problem in deciding how to find substitutes for the crystal malts the Americans use.

Living in Switzerland I mostly have access to Weyermann's caramalts and I thought a reasonable substitute for crystal 80 is Carabohemian which according to Weyermann is between 71.8-79.3 lovibonds.

For crystal 60 I use standard British crystal malt which is generally between 55-60 lovibonds.

Cheers

Jason