Weyermann® Einkehrschwung (showcasing CaraRed Malt)

[seymour]

Lately, I've been curious about Weyermann CaraRed Malt, having seen it listed as an ingredient in some really delicious beers. I've skimmed the comments on some homebrew sites: most people substituted it for traditional Caramel/Crystal malts, some have used it instead of Roasted Barley in Irish Red Ales...the only consensus I can gather is that it smells and tastes nice, but some users complain about it not producing as much redness as they'd hoped. Thinking they might not be using it as the manufacturer intended, I got this recipe recommendation directly from the maltster.

I haven't brewed it yet, but I plan to. Their recipe has some cool aspects: the highest percentage "base malt" is Munich (which reminded me of Stone Arrogant Bastard, and I'm sure this contributes to the desired red colour as well). Pilsener is next but only about half as much. It also contains a small percentage of sourmalz/enzymic/aciduated malt, which I always enjoy. The hops are a dual-purpose German variety called Pearl, which have also been appearing in several of my recent favourites. Weyermann calls for lager yeast, but there's no reason why you couldn't ferment it with a classic English ale strain (I'll probably go with the McEwans Scotch Ale strain.)

Weyermann is a German company. The following is via Google translate, so pardon any weirdnesses. Anyone know what "Einkehrschwung" means? The closest I can get is "a periodic sweeping" which I assume is a reference to downhill skiing?

Weyermann® Einkehrschwung

A red, light and sweet and malty lager beer...allow perfect end to a day of winter apres ski.

Malt Ingredients:
• Weyermann® Munich Malt Type 1 - 55%
• Weyermann® Pilsner Malt - 30%
• Weyermann® CARARED - 13%
• Weyermann® acidulated malt - 2%

Wort: 12-13% [OG: 1048-1053]

Mash Schedule: mash-in at 40°C, 20 min at 52°C, 20 min at 62°C, 20 min at 72°C, mash-out at 78°C

Hops: Aroma hops about 25 BE (2 additions) - "Pearl"

Yeast: Fermentis® Dry Saflager S189

In this formulation, it is a recommendation of the Weyermann®. Despite great care and experience, we can not accept any responsibility or liability for the success. The individual parameters must always be adapted to the technical and technological conditions of the brewery.

For more information:
Weihenstephaner Dipl.-Ing. Andreas Richter
Bersommelier and GABF Judge
Tel 0049 (0) 951 93220-22
email andreas.richter@weyermann.de

[Barley Water]

I have never used CaraRed myself but just looking at the recipe I bet it comes out very much like an Octoberfest. The thing about using a lager yeast as versus an ale yeast (and especially one that is not that great an attenuator) is that the beer may end up sweeter as an ale. The good news though about using the Scottish strain is you can run it at a lower temperature to keep the esters down and I guess if you asked me what beer comes closest to an Octoberfest (except of course a Vienna lager) it would have to be a Scottish Ale. I will again brew an Octoberfest this fall so I am interested to hear how things work out with CaraRed. First though I absolutely must brew some British stuff, a couple of Fulleresque brews anyone?

[jimp2003]

I really need to try brewing a few german beers particularly some of the more malty ones (I am not a fan of hefeweizen etc) so this recipe looks like a good candidate to break my Teutonic cherry so-to-speak.

BTW I believe Einkehrschwung refers to visiting a bar or a restaurant during a days skiing or at the end of a days skiing.

[seymour]

...BTW I believe Einkehrschwung refers to visiting a bar or a restaurant during a days skiing or at the end of a days skiing.

Sweet, thanks for sharing!

[jimp2003]

No problem. I am sure it is used in other contexts but it is something I remember from when I went skiing with a bunch of Germans when I was younger. The word came up quite frequently soon to be followed by much drinking and eating - Happy Days!

[PhilB]

Hi Seymour, or anyone else who may be able to help

Great looking recipe, thanks for sharing, but can you give any advice on how to interpret the hops section of it please ...

Hops: Aroma hops about 25 BE (2 additions) - "Pearl"

... I don't think I've seen that sort of description before ... is "BE" just another way of describing bitterness units, like IBU/EBU ? ... or should I interpret "25 BE" as "25 minutes Before End" or something

Thanks in advance
Cheers, PhilB

[seymour]

Great looking recipe, thanks for sharing, but can you give any advice on how to interpret the hops section of it please ...

Hops: Aroma hops about 25 BE (2 additions) - "Pearl"

... I don't think I've seen that sort of description before ... is "BE" just another way of describing bitterness units, like IBU/EBU ? ... or should I interpret "25 BE" as "25 minutes Before End" or something

I can't be sure, but I interpreted it as 25 IBU/EBU using an aromatic hop variety (which sounds about right for an Oktoberfest-y, malt-forward kinda thing).

"2 additions" is the typical German hops utilization, often something along the lines of 2/3 the hops weight for the full boil and the remaining 1/3 hops near the end of the boil. A Belgian recipe I posted yesterday makes a similar recommendation. Even though they call for two hops, they mix them together and boil half for 75 minutes and the other half for only 5 minutes. It's a pretty simple, no-fuss way to use dual-purpose hops. I tried this technique in an English style, too: my Black Walnut Mild used Challenger and Progess thus, and I absolutely loved the results.

[zgoda]

CaraRed is just ordinary caramel/crystal malt, about 35 EBC. Many maltsters make similar malts, it's just Weyermann's marketing department making it special in some way. Castle Malting makes CaraRuby, DMG calls it Red.

[orlando]

My understanding of "Red Ale" was as in Irish Red Ale, which gets the redness from roasted barley and how proportionately it is used. I used Carared in my Irish red ale and felt that it was "inappropriately" labelled as Zgoda intimates.

Eikehrschwung, the German equivalent of Apres ski then?

[PhilB]

Hi

I brewed my version of this recipe up yesterday ... I had some Lager Malt that I needed to use up so swapped that in for some of the Pilsner; and I discovered that the 38g of Liberty hops that I had in the freezer would give me the same bitterness as 70g of the Saaz I'd bought to use in this, and I decided that I'd prefer to have some Saaz in the freezer, so they went in; and the 500g bag of CaraRed I'd bought was a bit too little to make it to 13% of the grist (especially considering I'd been rounding the amounts of the base malts up, like one does ) so I added a bit of Black Malt (I didn't have any Roasted Barley and didn't want to buy some just to use a few grams here ) to get the colour somewhere between the 29-30EBC that Beer Engine predicted this recipe (as above) would turn out and the 35 EBC that zgoda said would turn out as red (over there (link)) ... so the recipe that I brewed ended up looking like this ...

Red October-Fest
Fermentable Colour lb: oz Grams Ratio
Munich Malt 20 EBC 6 lbs. 9.8 oz 3000 grams 53.4%
Pilsner Malt 2.5 EBC 3 lbs. 4.9 oz 1500 grams 26.7%
Lager Malt 3.0 EBC 1 lbs. 1.6 oz 500 grams 8.9%
CaraRed 35 EBC 1 lbs. 1.6 oz 500 grams 8.9%
Acidulated Malt 5 EBC 0 lbs. 3.9 oz 110 grams 2%
Black Malt 1300 EBC 0 lbs. 0.4 oz 12 grams 0.2%

Hop Variety Type Alpha Time lb: oz grams Ratio
Liberty Whole 6.0 % 75 mins 0 lbs. 1.3 oz 38 grams 92.5%
Saaz Whole 3.2 % 5 mins 0 lbs. 1.1 oz 30 grams 7.5%

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.3% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 25 EBU
Colour: 32 EBC

... I had a go at the step mashes, by starting out with a very thick mash (1.5 l/kg) and adding boiling water to move between the rests ... I came close, sort of "ballpark", to the various rest temps (40-52-62-72) ... and ended up with a very full mash tun (3.5 l/kg) to lauter from, too full to add more liquor to get a mashout rest so I had to leave that out.

I transferred to my no-chill cube at the end of boil and will leave it in my garage to cool and chill for a few days before bringing up to pitching temp and transferring to my FV (I find beers that have been left for a few days down at the cold ambient temperatures we are having at the moment seem to clear better than those I chill with my IC and transfer straight away ) ... to be honest it didn't look too red when I was transferring it, actually I've brewed 18EBC bitters that have looked darker than this did in the kettle/no-chill, but we'll see I suppose ... meanwhile, I've started a WLP029 Kölsch yeast starter which I'm going to pitch into it. I'm planning on bulk-conditioning/lagering it after it's fermented at ambient temps in my garage (probably around 8-9C at this time of year, but I'm hoping for a cold snap ) .. so I'll come back with a pic of some in a glass in a couple of months time.

Cheers, PhilB

[orlando]

It would be interesting to hear others views but my experience is that roast barley is better for getting you that red colour, think of Irish Red Ales. I don't think Carared is well named, something might have been lost in translation.

[PhilB]

Hi orlando

roast barley is better for getting you that red colour, think of Irish Red Ales. I don't think Carared is well named, something might have been lost in translation.

... I'm sorry, I'm not sure what point your making with that comment ... You do realise, I'm not particularly trying to make a Red Ale here, I'm trying to make this Einkehrschwung beer?

Having said that, if there are any red/orange/amber hues to be got from all that Munich and the CaraRed then I did want to push them up in the darkness stake, out of the orange/amber "zone" and more into the "red zone" ... which is why I added that pinch of Black Malt Or are you saying that you think only Roasted Barley has those reddish hues? Do you think 12g of Roasted Barley, instead of that 12g of Black Malt would have made all the difference here?

Cheers, PhilB

[orlando]

Or are you saying that you think only Roasted Barley has those reddish hues? Do you think 12g of Roasted Barley, instead of that 12g of Black Malt would have made all the difference here?

Hi Phil,

yes, that's all really plus the point about carared not actually doing it. The key is actually small amounts of roasted barley. Whenever red ales (I know that's not what you are making) have been discussed on here it's usually recognised as being the one characteristic most struggle with, me included. I have managed it once but this photo flatters to deceive it wasn't quite as red as it appears.

[DeGarre]

Red beers are easy!

69% pale ale
8% wheat malt
4.5% crystal150ebc
1.5% black
15% white table sugar
3% demerara sugar
some rounding errors

[jaroporter]

Red beers are easy!

drool....