EBC values

[seymour]

Another shortcoming in all these scales, in my humble opinion, is the inability to account for redness...

Well said seymore ...and how do they make beers red? I'm thinking of the Shepherd Neame "Autumn Late Red" lovely beer and lovely colour...

So what is your secret for redness? Carared seems to work well for me, but no cheap, any other ways? Crystal just doesn't seem to do it the same for me.

As others have said, a simple way to get redness is a small percentage of Roasted Barley, Black Malt, or just dark invert syrup (as with most modern-day "Irish Reds") but these can become more toasty and roasty than you want, or just really one-dimensional:


Another technique is large percentages of lightly caramelized malts, such as Stone Arrogant Bastard, which is believed to be 100% Munich Malt:


Here are a bunch of my own recipes which turned-out various shades of reddish brown. As you can see, I've taken many paths to get there. I'll skip the base malts and pale unmalted grains, and only list the ingredients which contribute colour. I sometimes darken my beers a little with kettle caramelization during long boils, too.

Saaz Stoopid
containing: 9% Crystal Malt, 2.3% CaraWheat, .9% Brown Malt, 14.4% Dark Brown Sugar


American Farmhouse Ale
containing: 12.8% Brown Malt, 1.6% Toasted Malt, .6% Roasted Barley


Dry-Hopped Barleywine
containing: 6% Special-B Malt, 4% Vienna Malt, 4% CaraWheat, 4% Brown Sugar


Chocolate Milk Stout
containing: 16.7% Red Wheat, 8.3% American Chocolate Malt, 8.3% Dark Brown Sugar, 3% Brown Malt


& Chocolate Sour (same mash, made from the second runnings plus dark brown sugar)


Black Walnut Mild
containing: 5% Crystal Malt, 3% Black Malt, 8% Dark Invert Syrup


Flyer Best
containing: 10.2% Toasted Buckwheat, 8.8% Victory Malt, 5.7% Crystal Malt, 1% Black Malt


Dark Mild No.3
containing: 8.5% Brown Malt, 7% Crystal Malt, 3% English Chocolate Malt, 3% Molasses

[zgoda]

Out of curiosity I entered my numbers to GW's BeerEngine and bang, 35 EBC.
21 ltr brew length, 31 ltr water in total, 80% total efficiency, 36 gms roasted barley, 300 gms pale crystal 60 EBC, pale malt to 1.053.

This US made software shows me about 20 EBC for the same numbers.

I'm not brewing to match numbers, but this looks to me Mr Wheeler is right.

[DeGarre]

My slight problem with this ebc discrepancy is, MOST of the brewing world thinks EBC like Beersmith et al, even breweries. Wheeler's BE seems to be a lone voice. So when I say to someone say 30 EBC it is like comparing apples and oranges (unless that someone knows this thread here at Jim's).

So from my recipes I might just take the colour out and use a few words: coppery, mahogany, pitch black, golden, orange, piss colour, etc...

[PhilB]

Hi zgoda

Out of curiosity I entered my numbers to GW's BeerEngine and bang, 35 EBC.

... thanks for checking and confirming that back here. That's really useful to know

Cheers, PhilB