Brewing Porters and Stouts by Terry Foster

Author:Terry Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

*Figures are from respective companies’ websites

**Estimate from fine grind figure

The point I want to make about the different color levels is that the higher the color, the more highly the malt has been roasted. Therefore, the higher the color, the stronger the flavor effect will be for a given rate of addition. Indeed, at the very top of the color spectrum given above, this malt comes close to the color of black malt, so that the flavor can be expected to be somewhat harsh, with less cocoa-type or nutty flavor. In other words, if you are making a brown porter, you might want to use chocolate malt with a color below 400°L at a rate of no more than 5 percent of the grist, or even Fawcett’s pale chocolate at up to 10 percent of the grist. On the other hand, if you are brewing an American stout and you want some roast character to balance the hoppiness, but don’t want the harsher flavor from black malt, you would probably go with 5 to 10 percent of one of the chocolate malts above 400°L.

Basically, chocolate malt is suited to any porter or stout, at a rate of 10 percent of the grist at a maximum. In choosing which one, you should first define what you are trying to do with that particular beer (which you really ought to be doing in any case) before you select the malt bill. That will decide what other specialty malts you might want to add; since you do not normally want to add above 20 percent of the base malt in total, this choice will limit how much chocolate malt you can add. In Irish dry stout (or foreign extra stout, where black is the dominant roasted malt), you may still wish to include a little chocolate (up to 5 percent) to ensure that the beer is not too harsh. If you want to use a lot of brown malt (15 to 20 percent), then you might eliminate chocolate, since its flavor notes can be swamped by those from the brown. But in the case of an Imperial stout, you may add it simply because you are throwing in some of just about every other specialty malt to give the beer more complexity, so that its underlying sweetness is muted.

Chocolate malt gives a fair proportion of extract, despite being high-roasted, with 71 percent being about average. This represents 1.034 SG/lb./gallon (8.5°P), or at 65 percent efficiency, 1.022 SG/lb./gallon (5.6°P). All of this (including the flavor components) is leached out by steeping in hot water, so that chocolate malt is ideal for use in extract brewing of porter and stouts.

Note that Weyermann also has its CARAFA® Special I, II, and III, which match those in Table 3.2 for color, but are made from de-husked barley. They should give a similar level of extract, but a somewhat smoother flavor than other chocolate malts, although I do not necessarily consider their use an advantage in porters and stouts.

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