As a visual artist, I have always been excited by color. And even though the computer has mostly replaced physical media, I often make a wistful detour through the paint aisle in the art store on my way to buy the boring pads of paper and pencil leads I actually use to do my work. In the homebrew shop, however, there’s no wistfulness, and no need to hold back in the malt aisle. There I see a rainbow of possibilities, and fill my cart accordingly—until it groans.
Crystal possesses characteristics that allow it to be used as a replacement for some expensive materials and processes—lightly kilned malts and decoction mashing, to name a couple. Crystal malt subsequently took the brewing world by storm.
(Kinsley Dey)
In my classes and consultations with professional and amateur brewers, I sometimes see a reliance on the same old ingredients, beer after beer. Sure, crystal malt has a great range of flavors, but does it really need to go into every beer? Brewers before 1880 did well enough without it, and there are many seldom-used malts that contain thrilling flavor possibilities.
Historically, it was rare for brewers to have a large variety of malts from which to choose. Lagers often employed just a single malt. No wonder that the old German brewing books wasted no space on recipe formulation. Viennese beers were brewed from Vienna malt, Munich beers from Munich malt—period. British brewers, then, had to be content with pale, amber and brown malts.
Eventually, brewers (or rather, brewery accountants) realized they could brew more efficiently with multiple malts and began optimizing their recipes for the bottom line. Richardson’s groundbreaking 1788 treatise on the use of the hydrometer really got the ball rolling. Out was the old brown malt, replaced by a mix of pale and black. Brewers half a century later lamented that their beloved old porter was no more.
Crystal malt shows up in the English and German brewing books of the 1870s. It’s unclear what the impetus was, but crystal possesses characteristics that allow it to be used as a replacement for some expensive materials and processes—lightly-kilned malts and decoction mashing, to name a couple. Crystal malt subsequently took the brewing world by storm.
