Fade to Black
The quintessential flavor and color of a Guinness Irish stout. The rich maltiness of an American amber. The crisp, dry finish and mild roast flavor of German schwarzbier. Using dark specialty malts and grains in brewing is not only a requirement for darker styles, but also a secret weapon amongst many amateur and commercial brewers for medium-colored and even some lighter styles. These roasted malts and grains significantly enhance the color and complexity in a beer. And there are other reasons to incorporate these roasted dark malts and grains into your recipes, whether you are brewing all-grain or supplementing an extract-based batch with dark specialty grains. Let’s examine these dark malt attributes a bit closer.
Why Use Dark Specialty Malts?
Flavor Complexity
Dark specialty malts add a range of rich, nuanced flavors that are difficult to achieve with lighter malts alone. Depending on the type of dark malt used, you can impart notes of chocolate, coffee, caramel, toffee, and even subtle smokiness to your beer. This can make your brews stand out with unique and memorable profiles.
Color Enhancement
Dark malts can transform the color of your beer, providing deep amber, brown, or even jet-black hues. This is particularly important for specific styles such as porters, stouts, and brown ales, where a darker color is characteristic. The visual appeal of a beautifully colored beer can be just as important as its taste.
Aroma
The aromatic properties of dark malts are as significant as their flavor contributions. They can impart a delightful roasted aroma to your beer, enhancing the overall sensory experience of drinking your brew. Imagine the enticing smell of roasted coffee or chocolate wafting from your glass — it’s an experience that captivates the senses.
Mouthfeel and Body
Dark malts can contribute to a fuller body and smoother mouthfeel in your beer. Through complex proteins and sugars, they often add viscosity and richness, making the beer feel more substantial and satisfying. This is especially desirable in beers meant to be sipped and savored, such as big stouts and barleywines.
Head Retention
Dark roasted barley malts contain proteins and polyphenols, as well as protein-polyphenol complexes. These are especially abundant in roasted barley, chocolate malt, and similar dark roasted malts. These surfactants, or surface-active complexes, reinforce foam structure as they settle to the surface of the beer and interact with air and CO2 providing foam stability. Caramel malts contain melanoidins, browned sugars and amino acids, that are also surfactants. Generally, roasted malts will have some intact proteins or melanoidins, meaning they are excellent for contributing head retention!
Historical and Style Accuracy
Many classic beer styles historically include dark malts. If you’re aiming to brew authentic versions of these styles, using the appropriate dark specialty malts is essential. Whether you’re crafting an English porter, an Irish stout, or a Belgian dubbel, choosing the most suitable dark specialty malts help you achieve the authentic taste and appearance that defines these beers.
Balancing Sweetness
The bitterness from dark malts can help balance out the sweetness from lighter malts and adjuncts, which is even more important in styles without a lot of bitterness from hops. This balance is crucial for creating well-rounded beers that aren’t overly cloying. The roasted bitterness can act as a counterpoint to residual sugars, creating a more harmonious flavor profile.
Experimentation and Creativity
Homebrewing is as much about creativity and experimentation as it is about following recipes. Incorporating dark specialty malts gives you a broader palette of flavors and aromas to experiment with. You can create unique brews that are entirely your own, pushing the boundaries of traditional styles or inventing new ones.
How Dark Malts Are Made
Dark specialty malts start the same way as most malted grains — first with steeping, then germination, and finally kilning. However, the key difference is in the final step of roasting (or sometimes extended kilning) at very high temperatures. Although we refer to these grains as specialty malts, some are simply raw roasted grain, like roasted barley. For our purposes we’ll refer to them as a category as dark specialty malt. Let’s take a look at how these dark malts get made.
Steeping and Germination – Growing in the Grain
Chocolate malt and black malt start the same as any pale base malt. The grain is steeped to increase moisture content and to initiate germination. This builds up enzyme levels and prepares starches for potential sugar conversion.
Once done hydrating and beginning to grow, or “chit,” the grain is moved to germination beds to grow. This is where enzymes are activated; however, we are less concerned about that for dark specialty malt, as these will be deactivated during roasting. After a few days, this “green malt” is moved to kilns or, in the case of caramel (or crystal) malts, directly to the roaster.
Kilning and Roasting – Drying the Grain
Kilning is how base and light-colored malts are made and may be a first step for many dark specialty malts. Whether kilned at lower temperatures (usually below 250 °F/121 °C) or moved from germination, most traditional specialty malt is made in a drum roaster similar to those used for coffee or nuts. The grain is tumbled and heated in the drum until it reaches a target temperature and color range. Temperatures and humidity in the drum are closely controlled and vary greatly, with a typical range of 250–600 °F (121–315 °C). This high-heat treatment causes a range of chemical changes that are important for the flavor and attributes of dark specialty malt:
Maillard reaction: (Non-enzymatic browning) produces complex flavors like toast, chocolate, and biscuit.
Caramelization: Occurs when sugars melt and brown, producing sweet caramel and burnt sugar notes.
Pyrolysis: Near-combustion and carbonization of the grain, resulting in bitter, dry, and burnt coffee-
like flavors.
Caramel or crystal malts are drum-roasted wet to convert starch to sugar inside the husk. This is the same basic mashing (saccharification) process that brewers do. This sugar then caramelizes during roasting, producing a glassy crystal core.
In contrast to caramel, a toasted malt involves taking a malt that has been dried and “finished” in the kiln, and then dry roasting it in a roaster. This imparts an entirely different flavor and spectrum of colors as well. You can experiment with this at home by taking your own base malt and spreading it evenly ¼-inch (6-mm) deep in a baking tray and putting it in your oven for 10–15 minutes at 250–350 °F (121–177 °C). Watch your malt closely to ensure it doesn’t begin to burn!
Types of Dark Specialty Malt and Their Usage
In contrast to base malt, which makes up the bulk of a grain bill and is used primarily for its enzymes and fermentable sugars, dark specialty malts do more with less, imparting large amounts of color, flavor, aroma, body, and head retention at less than 20% of the overall grain bill. Light specialty malts are generally defined as having a color below 30 °L; dark specialty malts usually fall within the massive range of 30–600 °L.
Due to this range, the differences in their sugar contribution, fermentability, color, and flavor vary widely.
Putting Dark Malts to Use
Dark specialty malts are versatile. How you incorporate them into your brewing process can affect your beer’s final character. Whether you’re brewing with extract or all-grain, there are a variety of ways to maximize those attributes of flavor, aroma, and color. You can also minimize harshness or astringency if you pick the appropriate method of use. The nice part about dark specialty malt is that almost all of it doesn’t need a traditional mash process (check if there is starch content in the manufacturer’s specs, these may contribute more from mashing), so you can be creative in how you steep and extract flavor and attributes from this malt. Next, we’ll get into some methods worth trying in your next batch.
For extract brewers, specialty grains are the go-to method for adding flavor complexity and depth.
Extract Brewing Methods
Traditional Steeping: Most dark malts are ideal for typical hot steeping. Add the crushed grains to a mesh bag and steep at 150–160 °F (65–71 °C) for 15–30 minutes before removing and rinsing the grain bag with a couple quarts or liters of 150–170 °F (65–77 °C) water. Then proceed to the boil. Be sure the steep temperature stays below 170 °F (77 °C) or you may get some harsh tannins and acidic notes from roasted grains.
Fast Steeping: Use the above traditional method for a very short time. By limiting the total steeping time to only 2–5 minutes, you’ll avoid extracting too many tannins or getting any harsh notes from dark malts. This method is ideal for dark and black roasted malts. It will keep the flavor well-balanced and is best when color is the main reason for using your dark malts.
Cold Steeping: Similar to traditional steeping, this method can be done before boiling. This is best done with dark malts that may contribute to harshness or astringency. Add the crushed grains to a mesh bag and steep at 50–70 °F (10–21 °C) for 30–45 minutes. Be sure to mix and move the grain bag around to make sure the proteins and other components are thoroughly diluted into the water. Cold steeping can be used with caramel malts and other lower color roasted malts, but the efficiency of providing sugar, flavor, color, and other attributes might be limited without a good rinse, using a couple quarts or liters of cold water. Cold steeping can also be done in the fermenter after fermentation is complete, or as you add the wort, in the first 30–45 minutes. Sanitize a steeping bag and add your grains. Your wort will be more susceptible to infection, so be as sanitary as possible if you choose this method. The added benefit is that your roasted grains will never be exposed to boiling, which means you won’t be getting any harshness and astringency. If doing this with caramel malt, realize you may be adding a small amount of additional sugar.
All-Grain Brewing Methods
All-grain brewing gives you full control over dark specialty malt integration and balance.
Traditional Specialty Malt Use: Crush and add to your mash tun with all other malts and grains and proceed with your mash schedule and saccharification as usual.
Late Mash Addition: Add your dark specialty malt during the last 10 minutes of the mash or even just during mash-out (sparge/vorlauf). This limits extraction of astringent compounds and leads to smoother roast profiles, which may benefit certain styles.
Cold Steeping: Prior to mashing, cold steep your dark specialty grains for 30-45 minutes at 50–70 °F
(10–21 °C) and then remove the grain. Use the water as part of your usual mashing regimen. As described earlier in the Extract Brewing Methods section, you can also steep these dark malts in the fermenter as well.
Beer Style – Example Usages
Although the dark specialty malt chart on the previous page describes a significant number of dark beer styles that require the use of dark specialty malt, there are many styles that benefit greatly from their use. Outside of the classics like Irish stout that require roasted barley, or robust porter and the prolific use of black malt, some popular medium-colored beers that use dark specialty malt are:
Red Ale — Irish and American red beer recipes often need dark specialty malt to impart a red hue. Although there are now malts designed to contribute a significant red hue, the classic method used by brewers is to add about 8% crystal 40 °L and 2% chocolate or roasted barley malt to a 90% base malt grain bill.
American Pale Ale — Crystal 60 °L (and Crystal 40 °L) has long been the balance to a heavy amount of hops in pale ales. Use a medium crystal, something in the range of 30–70 °L at a rate of about 5% of the grain bill to really balance your hops perfectly.
Barleywine — This big beer is meant to be malty. A heavy dose of dark crystal malt (80–150 °L) is often added at a rate of 3–5% of the grain bill. One trick savvy brewers use is adding 1% of a black malt to not only balance the sweetness with some acidic dark malt, but to impart a nice orange to brown hue in the beer.
Belgian Dubbel — This style loves dark specialty malts of all kinds. A pinch of a toasted malt like amber (1–2%), a dash of chocolate malt (2–3%), heavier amounts of Special B or another dark caramel (5–8%), and maybe even some medium caramels like Caramunich® (4–6%) and voila! A beautiful Belgian Dubbel. For those looking to experiment with different dark specialty malts that lean heavily into fig, raisin, and other dark caramel notes, this is an ideal style.
Midnight Rider Robust Porter
(5 gallons /19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.065 FG = 1.015
IBU = 35 SRM = 33 ABV = 6.5%
Like Belgian dubbel, robust porter is another one of those styles that allows you to play around with a wide variety of dark specialty malts. The style is quite open to malt usage interpretation, allowing the rich complexity of these malts to shine through. This recipe utilizes five different dark specialty malts to add body, enhance head retention, and impart a deep, rich, dark flavor.
Ingredients
9.5 lbs (4.3 kg) pale ale malt
12 oz. (340 g) chocolate malt (350–400 °L)
8 oz. (227 g) roasted barley (500–600 °L)
8 oz. (227 g) crystal malt (80 °L)
8 oz. (227 g) Special B® malt
4 oz. (113 g) black malt (optional for dryness)
5 AAU East Kent Goldings hops (60 min) (1 oz./28 g at 5% alpha acids)
2.3 AAU Fuggle hops (30 min) (0.5 oz./14 g at 4.5% alpha acids)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Fuggle hops (5 min)
½ tsp. yeast nutrient (15 min.)
Wyeast 1098 (British Ale), White Labs WLP007 (Crisp English Ale), or LalBrew Nottingham yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by step
Mash grains at 152 °F (67 °C) for 60 minutes with 3.5 gallons (13.2 L) of water. Sparge with 3.5 gallons (13.2 L) water to collect ~6.5 gallons (25 L) pre-boil wort. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops and yeast nutrient on schedule.
Cool wort to 68 °F (20 °C), pitch yeast, and aerate thoroughly if using liquid yeast. Ferment at 68–70 °F
(20–21 °C) until complete (~14-21 days). Keg and force carbonate or bottle with priming sugar.
Extract with grains version:
Steep specialty grains in 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) water at 152 °F (67 °C) for 20 minutes. Remove grains, turn off heat and stir in extract until dissolved. Proceed with boil instructions and recipe as above.
