Darkening Beers Through Extended Boiling

Floor malted pilsner is not under modified, this is a rumor that has spread. I quit using this malt a while back, but the last sack I purchased when looking at the malt analysis sheet it was more modified than the Barke pils I used to replace it. Also, if you were able to purchase under modified malt, which as far as I know you can't now days, correct me if I am wrong, you would be looking for a problem, just so that you can fix it with your mash regime. This is counterintuitive to me.

 

Can you somewhat replicate under modified malt by using a specific percentage of chit malt? I thought I read that somewhere but could be totally off base.

 

Weyermann floor malted was the first malt I saw during a quick search that was specifically marketed as "undermodified" here in the US. You are right that everyone should get a copy of the malt analysis before ordering. Several years ago, there were a few malts that were marketed as being undermodified and made for brewing multiple decoction lagers. They seem to be more rare now, and apparently even some products marketed as such are not the real thing.

As for fixing a malt problem with the mash program, some people like to do that, and feel that it results in a different, more desirable character in the finished beer. Personally, I'm on the fence, and waiting to be convinced one way or the other, but have a slight bias toward the old, hard way.

 

Interesting idea! What do people think? If anyone is not familiar, chit malt is the moral equivalent of raw or flaked barley but does not fall afoul of the Reinheitsgebot because it spent a few minutes on the malting floor before being dried.

 

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From what I have seen Weyermann does not market this as under modified, more beer is the one who is doing this. If more beer runs such a large home brewing site why do they falsely market this malt as such has me wondering? This is the first I have seen this marketed as such, but I hear all the time people spreading this false information.

 

You could lightly toast some of pilsner malt to add some color. No one knows what lovibond they kiln at. This has a nice scale.

https://www.brewcabin.com/roasted-malt/

 

Look into the pH of the boil if you want more Maillard products. Higher is better to a point.

PU may have LODO practices, but they also have copper vessels in the mash and boil. Copper is verboten in a LODO German system.

 

Nope, they have Stainless.

 

So the story the guide told about nothing changing when they put the new brewhouse in, and insisted on Copper, was bunk?

Maybe I'm not surprised, as many breweries have copper clad systems to make them look old world traditional.

 

Yup, when they modernized their brewery all stainless, the copper kettles are left in there for beauty though along with the goose necks. Most modern breweries that have copper boil kettles and mash tuns are just the outside for looks, while the interior is all stainless.

 

I saw the old brewhouse. Saw the new brewhouse. Any way to confirm that the new brewhouse is copper clad stainless?

 

My bad the mash/decoction kettles are copper the boil kettle is stainless. It's been a minute since I've been there, I had to go through old pictures and notes.

 

The lauter tuns are stainless, IIRC.

 

One thing that I thought of is that pasteurization also adds color.

 

According to Kunze pasteurization scarcely affects beer, I can't find anything else about color pickup, but the whole process is less than 2 minutes for flash pasteurization, so I couldn't imagine it picking up any color. Also depending on their pasteurization units the temp doesn't get near boiling, and no direct heat is applied, so I can't see any color pickup.

 

I want to amplify this point, which otherwise might get lost in the back and forth about copper vs. steel. It might be worth measuring pH and intentionally trying a somewhat higher one going into the boil.

 

However there can be some negative consequences to a high boil pH. Ones you might not want... I’d look for other ways to add color.

 

Certainly if you push pH high enough, you can encounter problems. But there is a range within which pH represents a tradeoff between different desirable attributes, and at the upper end of that range there is more color development than at the bottom end of that range. Why wouldn't it be sensible to aim for that part of the range?

 

The detriment of using a high PH 5.6-5.8 is much worse for your finished product than the benefit of a darker wort, I know the point of this post is for darker wort, but a higher PH is not worth the tradeoff. When using a higher PH you will also need to lower your PH at the end of boil or your yeast lag phase will be increased. According to Kunze some of the benefits of a lower PH are higher extract, faster lautering, mellower, softer, fuller flavor, hop bittering is more pleasant, stability of beer is increased just to name a few. Of course he recommends 5.2, but this doesn't allow much sauergut added to the knockout boil which to me is a loss of great flavor.

 

I wouldn’t want to go much higher than 5.4/5.5 at the start of the boil. Conversion of SMM to DMS takes less time at higher pH which is nice but for a beer that should be so front loaded with hops you wouldn’t want too high of a boil pH because the bitterness would be rather harsh. You’ll also get worse protein coagulation too and for a beer that ideally should rather clear that’s not ideal.

I’ve never done much research on the exact color pickup in relation to specific pH values.