Many of us started out as extract brewers, and as a result, we loved to use caramel malt for everything. Need more body in your beer? Add some Carafoam or light caramel malt. More malt flavor? Just add some medium caramel malt. Want a darker beer? Just add some dark caramel malt to it. Caramel malt fixes everything—right?
Not quite.
You see, as you move toward the darker caramel malts, an interesting thing happens to the flavor of your beer. It begins to take on harsh flavor tones, particularly if the malts are used in any quantity. In fact, many of the very dark caramel malts, such as aromatic malt, can be used only very sparingly without creating harsh, burnt flavors. In fact, if you look at the color range of available malts, you’ll find almost nothing is malted in the range from roughly 130–320 SRM. The reason is that malts in this range taste awful!