Grain ebc

[Shane mcdonagh]

Hey guy! New to the home brew scene! Looking to get my first brew going this week! Have a rough idea of a recipe!

Was looking at the home brew website for grain, I saw that some of the crystal malt grains had different ebc's! What does this mean? Big deal or not?

Thanks!
Shane

[irish_goat]

Welcome!

EBC refers to how much the crystal malt has been roasted. Low numbers will give light, toasty flavours and not affect the colour much. Higher numbers will give more burnt, stout like flavours and contribute more colour to the beer. Different styles of beer will obviously therefore require different degrees of EBC malt. Best thing I've found is to buy a few different ones and experiment.

[Shane mcdonagh]

Excellent! Thanks!

[Partridge9]

EBC is a reference to colour like SRM and Lovibond
http://beersmith.com/blog/2008/04/29/beer-color-understanding-srm-lovibond-and-ebc/

One thing to note on EBC - and especially EBC on crystal - is that

30g of Crystal150 and  90g of Crystal50 are not the same

while the colours and EBC numbers appear the same on your software the flavours will not.

So I think Thomas's definition/explaination is spot on as it does explain the reason for the difference in colours and flavours (which is more important in fairness !!)

[Jacob]

Post your recipe Shane so we'll have a look at it and check it for you.

[Bubbles]

I saw that some of the crystal malt grains had different ebc's! What does this mean? Big deal or not?

In addition to what the other lads have said.. a good rule of thumb relating specifically to crystal malt is that the higher the EBC of the crystal malt, the more careful you have to be with the amount you use. Generally you would use less 200 EBC than 80 EBC.

You can even get crystal malts up to 400 EBC which would really dominate a beer's flavour if you're not careful.