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How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 1:03 pm
by EckersKlein
Heya folks, Ariel and I were thinking about brewing a dunkelweizen; a bit of research has turned up a plethora of different methods brewers have used to make it dunkel. Some use chocolate malt, others dark wheat, munich, the list goes on. If anyone's had a go at this style, I'd be curious to hear your recipe and results.

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 3:45 pm
by PMowdes
EckersKlein wrote:Heya folks, Ariel and I were thinking about brewing a dunkelweizen; a bit of research has turned up a plethora of different methods brewers have used to make it dunkel. Some use chocolate malt, others dark wheat, munich, the list goes on. If anyone's had a go at this style, I'd be curious to hear your recipe and results.
Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?

Who was that man? I'd like to shake his hand

What does brewing classic styles say?

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 6:54 pm
by PMowdes
Brewing classic styles says

Pilsner 15.55%
wheat 54.09%
munich 23.50%
special B 2.94%
crys 40L 2.94%
Car Sp II 0.98%

67 degree 60 min mash

16 ibu hallertau

90 minute boil to avoid DMS

WLP 300 or wyeast 3068

Apparently this has a bit more crystal character than is expected for style so maybe rein in the crystal a bit

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 6:56 pm
by PMowdes
og 1.056
fg 1.014
16 srm
5.6% abv

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2015 2:24 pm
by EckersKlein
Wicked, and thanks for converting Jamil's malt weights to %'s. Looks like he also recommends a 16.5°C fermentation temp, so we better get on with this before the weather warms up. We'll probably ditch the carafa special though, and it's tempting to push the wheat content north of 65% just to see what will happen.

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:33 am
by jeddere
Also worth considering a decoction mash and a ferulic acid rest.

There's some interesting studies that have been done on how to get your preferred balance of clove and banana from adjustments to the mash - I'll try and find them later.

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:51 am
by EckersKlein
I like the sound of that, and I think its about time Ariel and I learned how to do step mashes. Might as well give it a go!

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 12:36 pm
by Taz Ales
If you haven't got it, I recommend you get hold of a copy of Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 10:45 pm
by jeddere
Brewing with wheat suggests:
- Ferulic acid rest 45 deg for phenols, 10 mins (Schneider Weisse) or >25 mins for even more phenolics
- Open fermentation common for increasing both esters and phenols
- Using carawheat and maybe chocolate wheat in a dunkelweisse
- Various single decoction 4 step mashing schemes that roughly tie up with those given at the end of this BSI presentation Wheat beer yeast and fermentation

Weihenstephan Dunkelweiss is listed as 1051 OG, 1010 FG, 14 IBU

I can't find the other document I was thinking of - it was an odd mashing scheme to increase banana - which you might not want anyway!

Re: How to get the dunkel-ness in a dunkelweizen

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 4:00 pm
by EckersKlein
We're brewing this up right now, woohoo!. The decoction mash is time consuming, adding about 1hr to the total mashing time, however it hasn't been very difficult from a technical standpoint. This page http://brewery.org/library/DecoctFAQ.html has some useful info, I've more or less followed the 2-step method he describes, but I cut the rest and boil times in about half based on decoction profiles from the BSI presentation posted by jeddere.

Here's our recipe:

60% Wheat
20% Munich
13% Lager malt from our bulk order, which is possibly American 2-row.
7% Cara Munich III

50g Hallertau boiled for 60m.

Yeast is WLP-300 with a 1L starter.

OG: 1.055
Expected FG: 1.012
Expected ABV: 5.7%

Currently about midway through the boil, so far so good!
-Eric and Ariel