whatstyleguidelines
Member
I've noticed that recipes for "off-pale" to light amber (generally pilsner-malt based) beers often boost malty flavors in one of two ways:
1) a reasonable portion of Vienna, Munich, or even Pale Ale malt, in the 10-20% range (like using some Munich in a helles, or
2) a very small proportion of a malt in the dark-munich family (like using some aromatic in a triple or a dash of Melanoidin to replicate decoction flavors in a pils).
I know you can get similar color with these approaches and the flavors often seem in the same ballpark, so I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on their relative merits or why one approach is favored over the other for a particular style. Is it just tradition?
I'm ignoring caramel malts for this discussion because those are obviously their own thing with a different class of flavors.
1) a reasonable portion of Vienna, Munich, or even Pale Ale malt, in the 10-20% range (like using some Munich in a helles, or
2) a very small proportion of a malt in the dark-munich family (like using some aromatic in a triple or a dash of Melanoidin to replicate decoction flavors in a pils).
I know you can get similar color with these approaches and the flavors often seem in the same ballpark, so I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on their relative merits or why one approach is favored over the other for a particular style. Is it just tradition?
I'm ignoring caramel malts for this discussion because those are obviously their own thing with a different class of flavors.