Kevnlis wrote:Sorry if I offended you TL. I was pointing out to James that the Caramunich was not necessary and that he could drop it and keep the choc, or use dark crystal if he liked and be within the guidelines of style. I thought maybe his reason for not wanting to use it was availability or stock issues, something like that. He seemed to want to know alternatives to using the Caramunich and I helped with that.
I myself am not much for the guidelines, but I do reference them to get an idea of where I am at in relation to commercial examples and what I hope are results of skilled brewers research.
My original recipe was actually not at all dissimilar to the one you posted there, which is why I suggested it earlier in this post.
The reason I scaled back the Munich in my recipe was to get away from it tasting like a weak Bock. Not that I do not enjoy a good Bock, it is in fact one of my favourite styles (simply because Munich is my favourite malt), I just wanted to be more able to discern between the two
I guess going by style your recipe is probably more like an Alt with the Munich scaled back a bit?
No offence taken, Kev - and crystal malt will be fine as an alternate...but I cannot understand why anyone would specifically cut down on cara malts such as caramunich I or II, carahell or caraaroma in favour of a more generic crystal malt? I'll happily stand corrected, but I understand that caramunich is sourced from munich malt whereas crystal malt may not be, even though they're all barley malt. I've found that whilst crystal malt does a good job at providing some colour and caramel notes to the beer, the caramunich malt provides a more fuller, robust, toasted grains flavour especially when you use the darker caramunich grains which also provide greater body through unfermentable dextrins present in the dark caramunich malt. It's not a huge difference but to me, it's subtle enough to be better, especially when you taste the real thing from Europe. It's the same logic that has me using Roasted Barley and Carafa instead of black/patent malt.
The BJCP guidelines are, as you suggest, a good reference point to help brewers out if, for example, they've never enjoyed an Oktoberfest but want to make one. Where I get shirty is when the guidelines suddenly adopt a life of their own and demand your slavish adherance - which I know you aren't suggesting! It's one of a couple of reasons why I rarely enter brew comps nowadays...
You make a good point regarding the bock - and FWIW I consider Bock's to be close cousins of the Oktoberfest but they are stronger, darker and an all round bigger beer. If you have a decent bottlo nearby, do a side by side tasting of a Paulaner Oktoberfest:
alongside a bottle of Ayinger Bock (especially the winter bock if you can find it!):
In a funny kinda way they're like comparing an IPA to an APA!
Cheers,
TL
How did I miss that one?!?!