Munich Malt experiment

We're up to brew number 18 at Cheshire Peaks. Most of our early brews were aimed at getting the hang of the all-grain brewing process, and for those we followed recipes (mostly from Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler).

But since we've been at this over a year now we decided it was time to branch out, and make our own mistakes. We really wanted to start getting a feel for the characteristics of some of the specific ingredients of beer. Recently we made a couple of ales that were hopped with a single hop: Cascade followed by Nelson Sauvin. These were interesting (although we had a huge issue with clarity of the Nelson and we don't yet know why).

So... to malt. Previously we've just used the "classic" malts used in British Real Ale - pale ale malt (usually maris otter), crystal malt, and a little bit of chocolate and black malt. But there are many other malts out there with their own characteristics, which brought us to munich malt.

Munich malt is used in European beers - both ales and lagers. It's a darker grain than pale ale malt, because it has been kilned for longer. So what we are expecting is a darker, maltier and sweeter beer than a traditional British bitter. We've held right back on the hops as well to keep the bitterness low.

We used two thirds munich malt to one third pale ale malt and a little bit of Kent Golding hops during the boil. (I'd post more on the details of the recipe, but I've tagged this post as "General"!)

At the moment it's busy fermenting, and I'll post details of the results when it's ready to taste.