Moorhouses Black Cat advice wanted

[nobby]

I am thinking of brewing a Moorhouses Black Cat clone but a bit unsure about a few things.

On their web site it says Maris Otter, Sugar and Fuggles hops. But it also says a Chocolate Malt flavour. I was wondering if they were using a Dark brewers sugar or Chocolate malt.

I have no access to Dark inverted sugars so it will have to be Chocolate Malt but how much in 23 ltrs and what EBU do you think. I was thinking about 170 grams of Chocolate Malt and about 25 EBU's what do you think??

[haz66]

I`ve never tried this as i`m not into dark beers so cant help with the EBU but 25 could be about right.
Chocolate Malt should be a maximum of 5% of the overall grain bill so if you are going for the same ABV
with Malt alone you should be aiming for about 3.5Kg overall so 5% of this (175g) would be chocolate malt,
but if you add sugar as well you can cut the Maris Otter down and thus the chocolate but adding sugar will
make the beer a lot drier, hope that helps a little bit.

[Dr. Dextrin]

I only tried drinking this beer recently and was impressed by the amount of flavour for a relatively low ABV. I was also struck by the lack of the usual chocolate malt flavour (despite what they say). I'm not especially keen on chocolate malt, but it manages to find its way into most dark beers, so I tend to notice when there's little or none present.

I made a mental note of the flavour in case I found time to try a clone and I seem to recall quite a lot of roast barley flavour. However, I think the amount of roast barley would need to be quite small, definitely a whole lot less than in a stout. Maybe no more than 100g in a 25 litre batch would be my guess. I can't recall tasting any sugar, so nothing too strong tasting I would think.

All guesswork, though, I'm afraid.

[Barley Water]

I was lucky enough to be invited to a vertical tasting of some Barley Wine a couple of months ago. As a prelude, one of my fellow participants allowed us to try some Black Cat and I was extremely impressed (infact, I thought it was the best beer I had tasted that evening). Anyhow, if somebody has a formulation which would be even close, I would be very interested. I like to have a low gravity brew in the keggorator during the warm months and I thought that was one of the best I have ever tasted.

[nobby]

I agree with Barley Water its one of the best bottled beers I have had in a long while.

Dr Dextrin there is no Roast Barley on the list of Ingredents on the Label just says 'Finest Malted Barley' Fuggles hops and sugar. THis is whats making me wonder if they use a Dark Brewing Sugar

[Dr. Dextrin]

From what I remember the taste was more roasted grains than dark sugar.

[nobby]

I dont have such an educated palate. SO you recon on giving Roast Barley a go, how much would you think? for a 23 ltrs brew

[Dr. Dextrin]

Yes, I'd suggest either roasted barley or maybe black malt if the ingredients say all the barley is malted (but I don't always believe the ingredients that brewers list).

I guesstimated no more than 100g (see above), but if you can find out the EBC colour of the beer (either online, or by comparing with another dark beer of known colour) then you should be able to work back to a quantity using brewing software. Black malt is very dark, however, and I don't know if you could get enough in to get the flavour without making the beer too dark. Not having a sample I can't even begin to guess the colour, I'm afraid, but that would probably give you the best guide for a first attempt.

[Barley Water]

Guys, I don't know if this will help you or not but I would not spend a whole lot of time worrying about the color, initally anyway. If you can make something that tastes close then God, in his infinite wisdom, made debittered carafa which is great for adjusting the color of a beer without adding a bunch of roasty flavors. God only knows what some of these brewers are using for color adjustment and for that reason, I would not use color to try and figure out what grains are being used. I look at recipe formulation as an iterative process which at least for me usually takes several tries to get things where I want them. I wish I has some of the commercial beer so I could do some "research" and help you guys out but the stuff is very hard to find over here, I was just lucky that one time.

[nobby]

The idea of the colour (spelt correctly LOL) is to give us a starting point

[idbrew]

I've had this a few times in bottles and loved it. I thought it had a pretty strong roast flavor so I wouldn't be afraid of using a good amount of roasted grain/malt. 100-170g in 23 liters doesn't sound like too much.

[nobby]

I did some research on this last night and most enjoyable it was to. It’s quite a bit darker than Hobgoblin I brew which has 170 Grams Chocolate malt in 25 Ltrs. I can see what Dr Dextrin means about Roast Barley Flavour. I think it should have a mixture of Chocolate and Black Malt/roast Barley or even just Black Malt.

[Dr. Dextrin]

I did some research on this last night and most enjoyable it was to. It’s quite a bit darker than Hobgoblin I brew which has 170 Grams Chocolate malt in 25 Ltrs. I can see what Dr Dextrin means about Roast Barley Flavour. I think it should have a mixture of Chocolate and Black Malt/roast Barley or even just Black Malt.

Pretty much my conclusions as far as I remember. I've found that if you mix chocolate malt with either of the darker grains then the chocolate malt seems to come through pretty strongly as it's a difficult flavour to mask. So I'd say use very little if any chocolate malt.

And, yes, the colour is only a rough guide to a starting point, but often quite useful nonetheless and easier than trying to estimate flavour intensity IME. If you want a decent clone, iteration will be essential.

[legion]

Old thread revival. Had a bottle of this last night and really enjoyed it. I really want to try and brew it. Doing some googling i have found the following grain bill:

1034ºMaris Otter Pale malt (80.5%),chocolate malt (1%), flakedmaize (9.5%), invert sugar (9%),Fuggles whole hops

Kristen England advises similar

"The arguably 4 best Milds made in the world are not all malt. Moorhouse Black cat uses about 10% flaked maize and 10% dark invert."

But this differs from Seymour's grain bill for it.

Has anyone brewed a clone of it with success?