Beer Forum

I bought bags of base grain like many of you here. A bag of Crystal 80 turned up to be included in the haul. When I got home and did some research I began to realize that you don't use Crystal 80 the way you use a base grain. Now I have 55lbs of Crystal 80 and no idea what to do with it.

Has anyone brewed or thought about brewing a beer where Crystal made up the bulk of the grain bill?

Does anyone have a suggestion on a recipe where a heavy Crystal component wouldn't be out of place?

Since I have the grain, I'm very curious about ways to make use of it, even if that results in something no sane person would have done. But I need ideas.

On a related note, are there any computer packages out there where you can type in your ingredients and the computer tells you what styles are possible to brew?

Welcome-

Crystal 80 is a great malt. You can use it in Ambers, Strong Ales, ESB, and other amber ales.
I recommend you pick up a copy of Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainisheff and John Palmer. It contains recipes for every style in the BJCP style guidelines, as well as valuable brewing tips.
It will help you to become acquainted with various specialty malts as well as hop varieties and show you how they affect the finished product.

HTH-

I'd also add How to Brew by John Palmer. There's an excellent explanation of the different malts, why they're different & how to use them.

Crystal malts are never used as a majority of the mash. When you read those books, you'll understand why it's not even worth trying. It's a great malt when used correctly. It will destroy a beer very easily when you use too much. Get both of those books, you'll never regret it.

You could make a lot of porter and scottish ales. I happen to like those beers with a really strong caramel note but I wouldn't push it over 1.5 pounds in a 5 gallon batch. If you wanted to make something stronger an old ale would be the way to go. You could also experiment with American amber ale. It's probably going to take you a minimum of 40 batches to get rid of though.

If I were to buy a 55 lb sack of any crystal malt, it would be crystal 80. I love the flavor, and it goes well in any American or British, non-yellow beer. I use large quantities of it in my brown ale, porter, and stout recipes ~ 7% of the grain bill.

We had a employee at the LHBS (that didn't last too long), who convinced a brewer that 80L was what he needed as the base malt in his Pliny clone.... Luckily the guy came in because he forgot something and we got talking and I realized the mistake.

spiderwrangler wrote:We had a employee at the LHBS (that didn't last too long), who convinced a brewer that 80L was what he needed as the base malt in his Pliny clone.... Luckily the guy came in because he forgot something and we got talking and I realized the mistake.

Wow. Just wow. One of my early batches I tried ~20% crystal... I couldn't even imagine what close to 100% would be. Well, besides disgusting & redefining 'cloying'.

Yeah, I comped him on the grain, luckily he'd only done the mash and hadn't thrown all those hops in the boil yet.