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Pale Two-Row (Base Malt)

The standard pale base malt of most beers, a clean, lightly sweet malt that provides the bulk of the fermentable sugar.

What Pale Two-Row (Base Malt) is

Two-row pale malt is the workhorse base malt of brewing, made from two-row barley kilned lightly so that it keeps plenty of the enzymes needed to convert its starch to sugar during the mash. It supplies most of the fermentable extract in an ale or lager.

Because it is so pale and clean, it lets the hops, yeast and specialty malts define the beer. Almost every recipe starts from a large proportion of a pale base malt like this, whether the two-row of American and English brewing or the closely related pilsner malt.

Colour and flavour

Colour: 1.5 to 2 degrees Lovibond. Malt colour is measured in degrees Lovibond, or the metric EBC, and is a rough guide to flavour intensity as well as to the shade the malt lends the beer.

Flavour and character: Clean, lightly grainy and bready, with a soft sweetness and no strong character of its own..

How much to use

Typical proportion of the grist: Up to 100% of the grist. Adjust to taste and to the style you are brewing; the figures here are a starting point, not a rule.

Pale Two-Row (Base Malt) is a base malt. Being a base malt, it is mashed with the rest of the grain so its enzymes convert the starch to fermentable sugar; it is not a steeping grain. It is central to styles such as American Pale Ale, American Ipa, English Bitter and Amber Ale, where it does much to define the flavour and colour, and it can be used in smaller amounts in many other beers. As with any grain, the right amount depends on the beer you are building, so treat the proportions here as a tested starting point rather than a fixed rule.

Related

Sources: BJCP Beer Style Guidelines · How to Brew (John Palmer), malt reference