So I recently received an order from MS, and to my surprise there were a few extra ingredients that I didn't pay for. I spoke with them and they told me its not worth the shipping cost and I can just keep it. So now I'm wondering what style I can make if any, or am I stitting on a bunch of random ingredients. Any recipe/style suggestion would be appreciated. 7 #s light 8 oz honey malt 4 oz chocolate malt 8 oz crystal 60L malt I 3 oz cascade hop pellets 1 oz NB hop pellets Cheers.
All of it. Reduce chocolate down to 2 oz(maybe 3), NB @ 60, cascade late additions. Should make a solid amber/red ale.
It's not a crystal or roasted malt (it's similar to a brumalt), so I would say it should be mashed to avoid starches. The next question is...can it convert itself in a mash (i.e. without adding a base malt)? I still haven't seen anything definitive about the diastatic power of honey malt. Lot's of people on the internet say it has a DP of 50 Lintner, but they don't cite anything. Could be true. Or could be a rumor started by a french model.
Hey just a thought; will extract convert? In other words could he just dilute the extract in 150 deg water then soak the honey malt, or do they boil the extract after mashing?
Some malts (such as Honey Malt) should be mashed rather than steeped, or else they will add unwanted starches to the wort. Mashing converts starches to sugars. The catch is that you need enzymes to do this conversion in the mash. These enzymes come from certain types of malts (sometimes called 'base' malts generically). The question is whether or not Honey Malt contains enough enzymes to convert the starches, or whether you would need to add another, more enzyme-rich base malt to provide sufficient enzymes.
Whatever enzymes were left over from the mash that produced the wort that was used to make the extract have already been denatured by the mashout step.
i'm sure a pound of two row isn't hard to come by and would be able to convert the honey malt just fine.
I would just use it all except maybe the honey malt if you don't want to mini-mash. It looks like they shipped you most of a full recipe that somebody else put together. Brew it and name it Free Beer.
I definitely wouldn't use honey malt as your base malt, but it can definitely be steeped and used as a specially grain in an extract brew. I have used it like this before and had no problems with starches. I read it has a diastatic power around 50, where typically 35 the minimum to convert. Again, this is going osff the research I did prior to making the batch.with my buddy who was starting to brew, so I don't have the actual source, but I say throw the honey malt it. I used it in an ipa, so an amber would be a great beer to try it with! Cheers!
