The Steady Decline of Caramel Malt
One of the hallmark features of American brewing—for its first three-odd decades, anyway—was reliance on caramel malt.* It was a signature element in the flavor profile of pale ales, ambers/reds, IPAs, Scottish ales, and porters. Caramel malt creates body, sweetness, and a caramel/toffee flavor (though may also contribute different flavors depending on type)—which over the past decade have come to be seen as increasingly passé. But once, they defined American brewing.
I am working on an article about American porters from this era, and I was reminded about what a prominent feature caramel malts were in porters and stouts of the era. In the best examples, it was an essential element, creating a nougaty-sweet center that balanced dark malts. They increase the perception of chocolate, moving the needle back from the char/coffee continuum, and are responsible for the huge popularity of porters in the 1980s and early 90s. (Fun fact: in 1987, the first year the GABF judged beer via category, porters were one of six ale styles—a cohort that did not include pale ales.) Americans were shocked to learn beer could be black in that era—but the flavors of caramel, chocolate, and coffee were comfortingly familiar, and so porters were hugely popular.
For some reason, porters experienced a catastrophic fall in popularity over the past decade—though I don’t think it had anything to do with the malts. That’s not true of pale beers, which have slowly shed caramel malts from their grists. The most obvious change over the past decade has been the focus on hop aroma and flavors and the turn to “juiciness.” Yeasts have also been important; as recently as three years ago the dominant strain in American brewing was the neutral “Chico” yeast used by Sierra Nevada. English strains, with their fruity ester production, have begun to replace neutral yeasts for maximal juiciness.
Pales and IPAs are sweeter today, which would seem to be good news for caramel malts, with their unfermentable, body-building sugars. It’s that body brewers don’t want, though, and also the particular, malty flavor of caramel. It is so prominent that even novice drinkers immediately recognize it, and worse, in this novelty-driven world, caramel smacks of dad (or grand-dad).
Trends are cyclic and I suppose caramel malts could come back around—but I wouldn’t bet on it. The heavy reliance on them was in many ways a feature of juvenilia—an immature understanding of brewing. Most of the early brewers came up as homebrewers, where the two-row-plus-caramel equation was ubiquitous. Even extract brewers added a bit of caramel malt. In part this had to do with the characterless quality of American two-row as a base malt; caramel was used to give it something beyond neutral sweetness. But now brewers have many choices and understand the way German, Czech, and English base malts work. Brewers like to build more nuanced malt flavors into their beers, and the heavy-handedness of caramel malt seems vaguely embarrassing. (Old-timers will remember how brewers used caramel in everything, including as a substitute for Munich in lagers. Embarrassing.)
All well and good. Some of the mid-90s beers, with cakey bodies, thick caramel palates, and jagged hopping, were old-school in all the wrong ways. I do not pine for their return. But for all that, one of the features that used to characterize “American” brewing was definitely caramel malts. I thought a blog post observing this change was the least we could do. RIP, old-timey caramel-malted beers.
Update: Just to be clear, it’s not like caramel malts have vanished entirely. They are still used, even in IPAs. Their use is just far more constrained when present and some styles require caramel malts.
We’re just going from a period in which they were nearly mandatory to one where they’re used like any other specialty malt and one in which the flavor doesn’t dominate the beers in which they’re used.
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*This variety is created by a process that heats the malt while it’s still wet—or “green”—caramelizing the sugars. Those sugars form tiny brickle-like crystals, which I presume give the malt its alternate name. (There are nuances in this process for those who wish to dive more deeply.)
COVER PHOTO: BREWERS ASSOCIATION