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How to make a Dunkel or Dark Wheat Beer


StevenT

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Hi everyone,

 

I have recently read the Coopers recipe to make a 'Hefeweizen'.

 

I was wondering how to modify this to make it a dark or dunkel version. (Similar to the Franziskaner Dunkel).

 

Any help for a new homebrewer would be most appreciated.

 

Cheers

Steve

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Hey StevenT, welcome to the Brewers Guild!

 

Thanks for asking the question - now I have another beer, set as homework (tough job), for me to taste and test[biggrin]

 

The Franziskaner is 5%ABV so perhaps you could try substituting the 1kg of Wheat Malt with 1.5kg of Dark Malt and drop the total volume to about 20litres.

 

Another option might be to use the Hefeweizen recipe but drop it to 20litres and add specialty grains, such as roast malt, but this makes things a bit more complicated.[innocent]

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  • 1 year later...

Has anybody tried a Dunkel Weizen? These are one of my fave types of beer (hmmm, I think I say that about every type actually).

I have the ingredients for a standard hefeweizen - the wheat beer and wheat malt cans - on hand.

I think using the dark malt can will make it way too dark (black almost), so perhaps maybe just a small quantity of roasted grains would do the job? That I have no experience with though.

 

Just took a squiz at the BJCP guidelines

Munich and/or Vienna-type barley malts gives this style a deep, rich barley malt character not found in a hefeweizen

 

It lists the SRM as 14-23 (in EBC this is 28-45)

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Its my favourite too. I tried to make one with my second brew after I picked up some ingredients that were recommended to me by my LHBS.

-1.5kg bavarian wheat can

-1kg malt extract dry wheat

-100g chocolate malt

-50g roasted barley

-Donatar munich wheat yeast

-Herabrucker hops (25g)

 

The process I followed was:

-Heat 2L of water to 65-75C and remove from heat

-Add 100g of chocolate malt and steep until water reduces to 35C, then add 50g of roasted barley

-Steep for 30mins, then strain.

-Boil the water and add half of the hops. Continue a slow boil for 20mins, then remove from heat.

-Add the remainder of the hops and then steep for 20mins.

-Strain into the fermenter

-Add the wheat malt (add slowly and mix as you go) and the can of goo

-Top up to 21L with cold water

-Pitch the yeast

 

I've found that there was a lot of sediment in almost all of my bottles so i'll probably cold condition this brew next time. I probably didn't take enough care when straining into the FV either.

Its been bottled for a month and the flavour and colour is pretty good. Another couple of months and I reckon it will be a cracker.

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But you want sediment in a weizen - that's all part of the style. "Mit Hefe in der flasche" which is on some of the bottles of Weizen style beers means "With yeast in the bottle".

 

But, thanks for the recipe. I have the Coopers wheat beer and wheat malt cans, so will look at the extra grains. Will leave the hops out for the first got and see how it works out.

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Has anyone ever used chocolate wheat?

 

After drinking a wheat beer on the weekend, I'm keen as mustard to give this recipe a crack.

 

I'm just wondering if anyone's ever used choc wheat, and whether they have any suggestions for what else it might go nicely with? Given that I'll have at least 700g to use elsewhere.

 

An alternative is to simply use chocolate malt, but then the overall percentage of the malt that is wheat drops below 50%, and that's a no no isn't it?

 

Cheers,

-Dyl

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  • 4 months later...

I have recently tried a Weihenstephan Tradition Bayrisch Dunkel and can't believe I've actually been to Germany and missed out on drinking this magnificent stuff while there.

 

I now wish to attempt my own. Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions to help me in building this recipe?

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Hi Daniel

It's possible to get chocolate wheat malt which would be the way to go.

 

Use the Weihenstephan hefeweizen yeast :)

 

I made a hefeweizen which I'm pretty happy with (I took some to Germany and got the tick of approval by Bavarians) so you could modify that and try a dunkel.

 

1 x Thomas Coopers Wheat Beer

1.5 kg TC Wheat Malt **

0.2 kg chocolate wheat malt

Wyeast 3068

 

** The amount of normal wheat malt can be adjusted - my Hefeweizen is quite heavy so the next time I would probably reduce the wheat malt. (I used about 1.9 kg - I used IanH's spreadsheet and 1kg as per this recipe didn't give good numbers. I would just use the 1.5kg can next time).

 

If you want to reduce the amount of wheat malt, but not waste the contents of the can, use some to make your yeast starter.

 

The yeast is really important in the flavour and aroma so you need to work out what characteristics you want - banana, cloves, bubblegum etc. The amount of yeast and the temp you brew at makes these characteristics come out. I made a starter with mine and brewed at 22 degrees (I think).

Use Mr. Malty to help work out what you need to do.

 

Hopefully that helps [happy] let me know if you try it - it's on my list of to-do's.

 

[EDIT] when priming I used 3 carb drops per 740 mL bottle or 2 per 500 mL hefeweizen bottle and it is perfect!

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