Carmel tasting beer

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RickyLopez

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First off, I know I may not b describing it correctly , but I am looking to make a brown/red English style beer with heavy "Caramel" notes. When I taste a Newcastle brown ale, I detect a really present caramel, toffee notes. I also notice this when drinking wells bombardier and other English ales. Apart from using English malts and hops (crystal malts, Marris otter, etc) what sort of yeast will give me that solid caramel/ toffee/ butterscotch taste you get from these beers????
 
i'm unaware of any yeast (english or otherwise) that give caramel flavors.

one thing that many english yeast do is not attenuate too much. this leaves more sugars behind, which possibly might be the source of the perceived caramels. i would look to the malts to get that character in there, and the yeast to not get in the way.
 
First off, I know I may not b describing it correctly , but I am looking to make a brown/red English style beer with heavy "Caramel" notes. When I taste a Newcastle brown ale, I detect a really present caramel, toffee notes. I also notice this when drinking wells bombardier and other English ales. Apart from using English malts and hops (crystal malts, Marris otter, etc) what sort of yeast will give me that solid caramel/ toffee/ butterscotch taste you get from these beers????


It's called age and oxidation. Those are what cause the "English" malt flavor.
 
Maris Otter as the base grain with about 10% Vienna (or Munich) and 5% Crystal malt (40 or 60) will do the job!
 
I would start by using a low attenuating yeast, as mentioned above.

Another thing to think about could be introducing SMALL amounts of diacetyl. Diacetyl has a characteristic butterscotch flavour that you get quite frequently in some English styles, particularly cask conditioned ones.

I know this may be sacilegious to many of you because American brewers seem to be very much of the opinion that ANY diacetyl is a major flaw. Looking through the BJCP guide it says things like "very low levels [of diacetyl] are allowed" for some of the English styles, but I would argue that it's more of a desired characteristic than a flaw that you tolerate.

I'm not suggesting going nuts with it because that would be disgusting, but trying to get low/middling amounts of diacetyl will give you a caramel/butterscotch flavour. An easy way to do this would be to simply not do a diacetyl rest (assuming you are already).
 
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