darkest. Caramel malt generally isn’ t found above 120 as any darker than that is just burning away the sugar, leaving the malt bitter and acrid. The lighter ones, 10-20, bring mainly sweetness with some honey-like flavors. This is good for adding a little depth to light lagers and blonde ales. 20-40 is caramel candy territory, necessary for a German Oktoberfest and American amber’ s mild sweetness. 40-60 is where we start getting into more complex flavors like dark caramel, toffee, and dark brown sugar. This malt is great for earlystyle American pale ales and IPAs, Irish red ales, and brown ales. With 60-80 we’ re bringing fruit into the mix: plum, raisin, cherry, figs, as well as toasted marshmallow. English bitters, Scottish ales, and Belgian ales live here. 80-120 is prime time for molasses, dates, dark fruit, and burnt caramel. These are the flavors for beefing up stronger beers like porters and stouts, old ales and barley wines, Belgian dubbels and quadruples. Only a few maltsters have had any luck producing caramel malts in the 120-150 Lovibond range. If used very sparingly, these malts can bring some extra oomph to strong dark beers like imperial stouts and barrel-aged beers.
There’ s more than just sugar caramelization going on here. Thanks to the Maillard effect, a reaction between sugars and amino acids in the malt, flavor compounds called“ melanoidins” are formed. These compounds produce flavors like toasted bread, nuts, fruitcake and graham crackers. Melanoidins also help with beer complexity as it ages. They react with oxidation creating new flavors like sherry, honey and roasted nuts. This is where the“ freshest is best” rule on beer differs.
Saint Arnold Brown, which sadly has been discontinued, was a great example: at about three months in the bottle, it got this amazing chocolate pudding flavor that really made the beer. While all caramel malt has melanoidins, English maltsters really shine here. English crystal malt is known all over the world for its complexity in flavor. If you’ re looking for a gentle, clean, refreshing caramel-flavor amber, American crystal all the way. If you want an amber ale that starts dark toffee, then moves into figs, and then into nuts in one sip, look no further than English crystal 60 with a little 120. Absolute chef’ s kiss.
After the Amber debacle, we tried getting compensated by the maltster. They balked, saying that“ malting is an art,” and we can’ t expect anyone’ s malt to have such an“ unattainable consistency.” I don’ t know if Saint Arnold ever got compensated for it, as I left during the effort to open Pint and Barrel. It took a whole week to dump that beer down the drain. Beer is a very frothy liquid and doesn’ t like to flow down a drain very quickly. We did drink a bit of it, but we were all quite bitter about the situation. It turns out that when 15,000 gallons of your flagship beer is taken out of the market, it ceases being your flagship. Lawnmower, an easy-drinking kolsch, took over flagship status due to its huge popularity. Don’ t expect any caramel malt in it, though. That wouldn’ t be to style!
I was filtering and not brewing the week that the wrong malt was used so I didn’ t have a hand in it. I’ d like to think that if I were on brew that week, I would have picked up that it was different. I’ m a malt muncher, you see. I still keep some behind the bar at the pub( if any of you want to try some, just ask me!). Whenever I was loading up the hopper with malt headed to the mill, I would help myself to a handful. The malt in question, Caravienne, a Belgian medium caramel malt, smells and tastes delightful. It was one of my favorites to munch on. I loved its sweet, biscuity, raisin-plum nuttiness. I knew it by smell, taste and color. I feel I would have known it was wrong as soon as I cut open the first sack and got a whiff. Then again, who knows. When you’ re so busy brewing, grinding, cleaning tanks and keeping your head above water, you might miss a thing or two.
Chris Keller has worked in beer sales for a distributor, as a brewer for Saint Arnold Brewing Co. in Houston, and is the owner of Pint and Barrel Drafthouse in Palestine, Texas.
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