Beer Forum

I'm considering trying to brew an IPA that's around 5-6 SRM. The idea is to use a variety of lightly colored malts to give that balancing sweetness and complexity to play foil to the hops, e.g., a mix of Maris Otter, Golden Promise, etc...

What lightly colored malts give unique flavors that can help balance hop complexity?

Sure you can use a floor malted grain like Maris Otter. Maris Otter refers to the strain of barley and not to whether its floor malted or not. Floor malting means that the malting barley is turned by a person with a big rake, rather than buy a machine. That's up to the maltster. I know Thomas Fawcett & Sons malts their MO, GP and some of their other malts in the traditional way (floor).

I've brewed the CYBI Green Flash recipe several times now and that beer is sure hard to beat. It uses Am 2 Row and C40, but you could easily brew it with British Carastan or even use Mild ale malt as the base.

You best bet is to go to your hb store and taste the grains until you get the flavor you want.

Crisp makes a fantastic floor-malted Maris Otter. It's my British base malt of choice.

I think they can be great but they can also be overdone, and I think it's usually necessary to cut back on the specialty malts somewhat, especially the crystal. There is a great pale ale out here in Porltand brewed by Amnesia that uses only marris otter and cascade hops. It's awesome. Also I've done a big Am. IPA with only Glen Eagle Marris Otter and it comes out pretty malty, but that is a very dark base malt at 5-6L.

Substituting a lb or so of Victory (or biscuit if you can't get Victory) and a couple of lbs of Munich 10L for some of the Crystal and base malts adds a nice grainy, nutty complexity that isn't sweet like Crystal. I use that combo in all of my pale ales and IPAs:

Here's a variation of a recipe I've done that took down some medals using this basic principle.
http://www.brewtility.com/ViewRecipe.aspx?RecipeID=50

HTH-

Thanks for that Bdawg, I'll probably try that recipe and let you know how it turns out.