Quick Overview
SRM/Lovibond = 1.8-2.2L
[from Briess website]
"6-Row malt delivers a more "grainy" flavor than 2-Row." Not necessarily. Plus, this only applies to base malts. That's because such high temperatures are used to develop flavor and color in specialty malts, that any original barley flavor becomes history. We'll discuss color and flavor of 2-Row and 6-Row specialty malts later.
That being said, the same crop quality issues that affect "plump" affect flavor. When both 2-Row and 6-Row base malts are made from high quality raw barley, 2-Row base malts tend to have a more clean and smoother flavor profile as compared to 6-Row base malts. But a poor crop of 2-Row malting barley can reverse that.
The other important note to make is that flavor differences between 2-Row and 6-Row malts are more detectable in lighter flavored, lightly hopped beers. When you don't have flavor masking by specialty malts or hops, that's when you may want to reach for 2-Row base malts. When a beer's flavor intensity is at about the level of an Oktoberfest or beyond, or when a beer is more heavily hopped, the difference between the two malts becomes negligible.
