German Brewing

HI - first post for me and I'm looking for some thoughts on a Dunkelweizen recipe. My current direction:

Bru'n Water for water chemistry TBD (need grain bill and mash schedule figured out)

Contemplating mash in at Ferulic Acid rest 110-115F 15min, followed be hot water infusion to protein rest 20min, decoction to 152-154 40min (thick; DC rest at 152 for 15 minutes, boil 30 minutes, return to mash) and decoction to 168 for mash out (thin; 10min boil). Have seen options as simple as single infusion at 152F (Jamil's recipe). Grain bill obviously could impact choices here.

Grist:
50-55% German wheat malt (roughly 5-6lbs)
40-45% Weyermann Barke Munich Malt (4-5lbs)
TBD 20L grain (Caramel, CaraMunich, dark wheat) (6-8oz)
TBD 80-120L grain (Special B, Caramel) (6-8oz)
1% Carafa Special II (2-2.5 oz)

Hop schedule:
Hallertau bittering addition to hit style (@60min)

Yeast:
Lots of options here - checking basement temp to see how cool I can get it. Might try to assemble a swamp cooler setup to hit low 60's (heat wave in OH this week).
Ferment 62-66F. Pitch at normal yeast qty (1 smack pack/vial with a 1L starter).

Any and all help appreciated!

How crazy of a mash you want to have?




The grain bill would be good to follow as well.

I'll offer up mine. Came out quite good actually. Only change I will/would make is up the wheat another 5% to see what that does. Not enough for me on this one.

Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.10 gal
Estimated OG: 1.045 SG
Estimated Color: 17.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 14.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 74.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 84.1 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
4.50 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 1 50.0 %
3.60 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 2 40.0 %
0.45 lb Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM) Grain 3 5.0 %
0.45 lb Chocolate Wheat Malt (400.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.0 %
1.00 oz Liberty [4.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 14.9 IBUs
1.0 pkg German Wheat (Wyeast Labs #3333) [124.21 Yeast 6 -


Mash Schedule: Step Mash
Total Grain Weight: 9.00 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Protein Rest Add 2.00 gal of water at 146.7 F 134.0 F 25 min
Saccharification Add 1.50 gal of water at 186.1 F 154.0 F 45 min

It came out quite darker than I expected. (I think the chocolate wheat is actually a Midnight wheat at closer to 500 SRM).
But the flavor is otherwise as close to spot on as I want.

Good luck with yours!!

It's not that crazy. It's also known as the Maltase mash. You make Maltose then drop the temperature to the maltase range (40-43 ish) and add more starches (and enzymes) so that the maltase can convert the maltose into sucrose. The sucrose strongly enhances the banana flavour and other by-products

I don't like banana-bombs, but this one can be quite interesting when tipping the chloride:sulphate ratio slightly towards the sulphate side to compensate.

Your mileage may vary but plenty of people use either this one, or the one with the enhanced double decoction. In can also be done on infusion systems.

Note that during a double decoction the effective wort boil time increases and already clears some DMS. When infusing then I'd add another 20-30 minutes to the overall boil if you want a bit of that flavour. No need to spoil it with melanoidin malt.

How do you decide when to use pale wheat vs dark wheat in a dunkelweizen?

I don't think you will ever use dark wheat. I don't think anyone in Germany is using it.
It's almost always a high % of pale malts and a low % of cara or roast malts.

Like Bryan said, very often dunkelweizen is similar to hefeweizen but with the use of 5% caramunich and 1% roasted malt. There is another way to go about it, by using 20-40% Munich malt in the 10-15 EBC color range and then using less caramunich or roasted malt. I would probably aim to keep the total caramalt percentage around 5%, using a mix of caramunich and carahell to get the color right.

If you want to try using dark wheat malt, go for it. I probably wouldn't use more than about 25% dark wheat.