As part of a Homebrew Tasting/Judging Circle I’ve been organizing, we recently did a tasting of an array of different Caramel malts.  The goal was to identify the differences between these malts, other than color.

For each malt, I did a small mash of 6% crystal, 84% Briess Pale Ale malt.  All of the Caramels were also made by Briess.  The mash temp was 154 degrees.  

The big flaw in my methodology was that I did a rather poor job of controlling mash temps. The small (coffee cup sized) mashes have a very small thermal mash, and thus the temperatures dropped rapidly.  As a result, the flavor and color extracted were much less intense than I had hoped.

That said, the range in color were evident, as were the differences in taste:

• 10L tastes like base malt, slightly bigger “fluffy” mouth feel
• 40L the most purely sweet.  simple.
• 60L not as sweet, a bit more complex.  more residual flavor
• 80L less sweet, more fruity (raisin), but very subtle
• 120L not at all sweet.  a very slight burnt sensation at the back of the throat

I got the idea for this tasting, as well as the basic methodology, from they May/June 2013 issue of Zymurgy.