German Brewing

What is everyone's favorite Pale Malt Blend? I have been playing around with best pilsner and golden promise, hopefully the golden promise isn't to strong for a pilsner.

90% pils, 10% Vienna. I like Best Malz.

Has anyone tried Shills Kolsch Malt? Its touch darker than pilsner, more like 3.5-4 EBC if I recall.

Seems like it'd be a great base for helles.

I think kolsch malt is more like 3.5-4.5 SRM, not EBC.

I think it would be fine for blending into Pilsner malt. Any base malt in the 5-9 EBC range (Vienna, kolsch, pale ale, etc) is worth exploring as an adjuster malt. Heck, try Munich malt and see if it works in your recipe. Most Pilsner malt I see nowadays is very pale (3.0-3.3 EBC) and I think that adjusting it upwards to 3.8-4.0 EBC or thereabouts is a good thing flavor-wise. Of course you could adjust it to be lighter or even darker than that, it's all personal taste.

You can make a good rendition of pretty much any pale lager style with a base malt blend around 3.8 EBC + a splash of caramel malt (1-5%, typically 2-3%, the color is your preference). Of course, that doesn't mean that your base malt needs to be at 3.8 EBC or that you need to use caramel malt at all to make a beer you like. It's just an anchor point.

I've done helles, kolsch, and pils with it with good results. I've tried varying the amount of vienna between 10% and 20% and I think 10% is about right if you're going to layer another malt on - but it also depends on how dark/flavorful your pilsner malt is (Best > Weyermann > Avangard, Swaen, Castle IMO). I've also used carahell, carared, and caramunich in combination with that base malt blend and enjoyed the beer a lot.

There are a heck of a lot of ways to hit 4 SRM beer with all of the different malts we have at our disposal, especially LODO, and none of them are "wrong". YMMV, find what works for you personally, etc

I use weyermann pale ale malt to tweak my grist. For the longest time my barke has been 1.7l, but my newest sack is 2l, so I will probably leave it as is.

I did a Helles with Weyerman Pale Ale (appreciate the advice Bryan) and Weyerman Pils along with 6% Carahell and was very happy. Speaking of which... this was the first Helles that I actually let lager long enough before drinking it and my god was it an improvement. I kind of like that bit of sulphur tank taste but after a month + at freezing it was super clear, clean, and amazing. Kicked the keg in a night during the Superbowl. Planning on rebrewing with the trifecta and maybe toning down the Carahell a percent or 2.

Have another one lagering now that I made with what was available at the closer LHBS. So that's Avanguard Pils and Simpsons Golden Promise. I'll see how that turns out.

I'm going to be using 60/30/10 Pils/Pale/Vienna in my upcoming Pale Belgians.


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