Specialty grain substitutions

[Chacmool]

I'm going to do an American amber ale and the recipe calls for a Caramel specialty grain of 20° L. Would Cara Red or Cara Amber be the better substitution? Also would British Caramalt EBC 30 be a good grain for an English bitter?

[molc]

I use crystal at around 100 ebc in my ambers for the caramel flavour.

[Garry]

Here's a great malt reference chart.

Caramel 20°L sounds like crystal 20? That's matching up with carared on the chart.

[Bubbles]

I'm going to do an American amber ale and the recipe calls for a Caramel specialty grain of 20° L. Would Cara Red or Cara Amber be the better substitution? Also would British Caramalt EBC 30 be a good grain for an English bitter?

What's your full recipe? I presume there's some roasted malts or darker crystal in there also? You'd have to use a hell of a lot of 20L crystal to get an amber colour..?

The crystal malts used in English bitters would traditionally be around 150 EBC. Less caramel sweetness and more toasty flavour. Doesn't mean you can't make a good English bitter with the 30 EBC, but you might want to add some roasted/toasted malt to compensate for colour and flavour. Google for "graham wheeler recipes" to get an idea.

[Garry]

Also would British Caramalt EBC 30 be a good grain for an English bitter?

EBC is roughly 2x SRM (or Lovibond). So Caramalt EBC 30 would be ~15 SRM. This would be a pale crystal malt. I think most english recipes that call for crystal are referring to medium crystal which would be around 60 SRM.