[erockrph]

One more quick update for those of you following along at home. I finally rustled up a 1cc oral syringe and was able to do some measured dilutions and dosing with this. I mixed up a 20% dilution with water, which was enough to get this to disperse evenly when dropped into a beer. I poured a can of Pivo Pils and added my diluted caramel solution 0.5mL at a time, which is the equivalent of 0.1mL of undiluted caramel. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures.

Here are my results, converted back to the amount of undiluted caramel to get said result:

0.0 mL - Plain old Pivo Pils, light gold in color
0.1 mL - Deeper gold, Maibock-esque
0.2 mL - light orange/amber, typical Märzen color
0.3 mL - reddish brown, could pass for a fairly light Dunkel or brown ale
0.4 mL -0.6 mL - deeper shades of brown, Dunkel range
0.8 mL - 1.2 mL - deep brown/mahogany/cola - Schwarzbier range

I stopped at 1.2 mL, which is black at a distance but still shows through brown under close inspection in the light. I honestly can't pick up any difference in flavor. And clarity doesn't seem to be affected significantly either.

Verdict - a nice substitute for Sinamar or Midnight Wheat as a color adjustment. I haven't priced it out, but I can't imagine that this is worth paying to ship it in from the UK. I think it is quite flavor neutral, so those that pick up some flavor that they don't want from dark grains or Sinamar may consider this as an option. I certainly wouldn't complain if this started to be made available in the US for homebrewers.

In the meantime, I am rather enjoying my Pivo Schwarzbier...

[stpug]

Thanks for keeping us posted on your trials with brewers caramel. This is all very interesting to me since I've just started playing a little with some. I've just brewed a strong mild/ale using my homemade brewers caramel and based on your color descriptions I would say my wort probably landed in the 0.4-0.6ml color range, which extrapolated out to about 5 gallons would use about 25mL. I used about 45mL to get there so mine is not nearly as dark as commercial stuff, but it seemed to work pretty well without much (if any) noticeable flavor/aroma contribution at the amount I used. I guess the real test will be when it's done, kegged, and serving

Thanks again for posting your insights on using this stuff. It seems to be the best accounting for it's usage, contribution, and dosing at the homebrew scale I've been able to find.

Cheers!

[erockrph]

Thanks for keeping us posted on your trials with brewers caramel. This is all very interesting to me since I've just started playing a little with some. I've just brewed a strong mild/ale using my homemade brewers caramel and based on your color descriptions I would say my wort probably landed in the 0.4-0.6ml color range, which extrapolated out to about 5 gallons would use about 25mL. I used about 45mL to get there so mine is not nearly as dark as commercial stuff, but it seemed to work pretty well without much (if any) noticeable flavor/aroma contribution at the amount I used. I guess the real test will be when it's done, kegged, and serving

Thanks again for posting your insights on using this stuff. It seems to be the best accounting for it's usage, contribution, and dosing at the homebrew scale I've been able to find.

Cheers!

Glad it's appreciated! I figure if I'm experimenting with something that I can't find a lot of info on myself, then I should probably share my results for others in the same boat

[raf]

A little late to this party, but I finally had the opportunity to use this Brupaks caramel and wanted to share my experience.

I'll second what Eric said. This stuff is viscous, and I mean really viscous. The instructions on the bottle say that it can be added during the boil, in the fermenter, or at racking. I opted for the latter. I had planned to measure 6 mL into a graduated cylinder and then stir it into my priming solution (this was for a bottle-conditioned English IPA), but that went out the window when most of the caramel just clung to the cylinder. So I got out the spoons and measured and stirred in 1.25 tsp instead. So far so good.

I can corroborate that this amount will darken a five-gallon batch by around 5 SRM (just using the eyeball test, of course).

I couldn't detect any flavor from it in my diluted sample, but I'll see how the finished beer turns out after conditioning.

The caramel diluted pretty easily when I stirred it into my hot priming solution. I think that if I were planning to keg, I'd just add it to the boil. Not sure how I'd go about trying to add it to the fermenter or keg, as it really just does sink to the bottom in sort of a loosely bound mass.