I'm planning on brewing a pale ale in the next week or two. I'm toying with doing something other than 2-row and some crystal (I partial mash BTW). I believe it was "Brewing Classic Styles" that had a recipe with base and some Munich only. I'm intrigued by this. Anyone used this in a pale ale before?
You could go as high as 100% munich. Ideally if you did this you would use a lighter munich. More commonly people do 100% vienna over munich. I think almost everyone active on the forums here will made a pale ale with munich, vienna or another toasted malt. In your case I would not be afraid of using munich extensively.
I have not - but it is not at all atypical. I like my pale ales to have a significant malt backbone; it balances them out nicely. There are those that would commend you for picking munich over crystal as well.
I used Munich in a pale ale. The end result was more copper than pale. The maltiness was spot-on for SABL. --- checking notes... 1# Munich 6# Golden Promise 1# honey malt. 1oz. Magnum at 60 1oz. Citra at 15 Wy 1945, 3rd generation, 1 litre starter. That is way more honey malt than most people recommend but I was trying it out. My notes don't say whether I dryhopped or not. Sometimes I don't get back to my notes to record anything that happens after the brew-day. My notes do record the day I kegged, so I probably didn't dryhop. This beer could have used more hops. It was tasty but I'm not sure that it qualifies as a pale ale. It definitely improved with age. If I were to brew again, I would use less Munich.
I personally do not use Munich malt in my homebrewing of American Pale Ales (I use ½ lb. of crystal malt). I can envision that using a bit of Munich malt would ‘work’ as well. In the Brewing Classic Styles recipe for an APA the all grain recipe lists 0.75 lbs. of Munich malt as part of the grain bill; that sounds OK to me. Cheers!
I think a lot of us will say that it's fine to replace your 2 row with Munich, Vienna, MO, or another malt just to give it some complexity. Too many grains make the beer taste muddled, but I usually use 2 row, Munich, at least one type of crystal, and some carapils. After that it's a hop load of 60, 10, 5, 1, KO, and dry.
I frequently use 20% Munich 8-10L in my Pale Ale/IPA grain bills especially near the fall. I use Pale Ale malt, which is American 2-Row kilned to English levels at about 3-4L along with the Munich. Then again, I never use crystal malts.
What kind of hops do you plan to use? In my experience, a significant amount of Munich (20% or more of grain bill) with American C-hops is not good. The maltiness does not mix well with citrusy. Just my opinion. More earthy or herbal hops would probably be nice.
how about when using pilsner malt? how much percent of light crystal would you use to give it a good amount of maltiness without making the color too dark?
I was planning on using an even mix of 2 oz. each, Citra and Centennial, with a bit of Nugget for the bittering charge. Going for a citrus/fruit forward profile. Overall looking at an SG of 1.050-1.054, IBUs to about 45-50.
I was just looking over some recipes for Firestone Walker pale ales: 80% pale malt, 15% Munich, and 5% carapils.
This. I'm a big Munich fan, and I've used all Munich in both IPA type beers and pale ale type beers. Being a SMaSH fan and frequent SMaSH brewer, I've tried a few different versions using all Munich. My favorite so far was Munich malt with Bravo hops (1/2 at 60, 1 at 5, 2 at FO). I concur, use the lighter Munich (10L around here). Munich does a fine job on its own without any crystal malt too. I've also used all Vienna malt, it too makes a fine pale ale or IPA like beer. I'm probably odd man out in that I prefer all Munich over all Vienna. I've even mixed them 50/50. If you are doing partial mash with extract, you could essentially use ANY good base malt 100% and get good results. You could even use Munich extract with Munich malt in the mini-mash and still get good results. Just chunk some hops in there and go for it. I suggest using the "shovel method" for the hops.
