chocolate spelt

Anyone used chocolate spelt before? I was thinking of making a stout with it. Any tips? Ideas? Warnings?

So far the grain bill will include:
Vienna
Melanoidin
Caramunich III
Chocolate Spelt
Oatmeal

Any ideas for ratios or other grains I should add?

Any pale malt for enzymes in that recipe?

brewfun said:

Any pale malt for enzymes in that recipe?

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The Vienna should work, no?

evilgiraffe said:

The Vienna should work, no?

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If you're going to use a generous amount of it, yes. It'll depend on temperature, time and the percentage of other grains. The rest of your recipe has zero diastatic power. Plus the oats and spelt are unmalted, meaning the enzymes have more to work on.

Vienna has 70 to 90 degrees lintner of enzyme potential. Weyermann targets 90, Briess is about 80, while various European & Belgian sources range from 70 to mid 80s.

It takes 35 lintner to be "self converting" but that takes around 75 to 90 minutes at 150F. It really takes about 50 lintner to convert in 60 minutes across the full range of mash temps. It'll take at least 2.5 lbs of Vienna malt per pound of other grains to get reasonable conversion. In other words, 25 to 30% specialty grains is where you'll see a loss of extract.

Another consideration is gravity. For instance, Weyermann Vienna malt is around 77% at coarse grind, as-is (meaning what you'd expect in a brewhouse, instead of a lab) and Briess is around 75%. This means that a mash efficiency of 72% yields just about 25 pppg for either of them. In other words, 10 lbs of Vienna to get 5 gallons of 1.050 wort. The same amount of pale malt could get you to 1.055 or so.

Wow. Thanks for that awesome answer, Brewfun. I'm still a relative beginner at mashing, so that really helps.

What happened is that I'm in Korea and the place I order from over here was/is out of pale and pilsner malt. So I did a little reading and decided that Weyermann Vienna malt would work for me.

The way I have the grain bill figured right now (and this can change if need be) is with the Vienna making up 68% of the grain bill. Think that's enough?

evilgiraffe said:

The way I have the grain bill figured right now (and this can change if need be) is with the Vienna making up 68% of the grain bill. Think that's enough?

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You'll definitely get beer. As long as you get the flavor you want, the numbers aren't all that consequential.

Keep a log of your gravities and volumes along the way. If you need to make similar compromises, this'll give you a good starting point.

Cool. Thanks for the help.

Now, back to the chocolate spelt. Anyone have experience with it?