Muss

Recipes 

Hi All

I'm going to brew the following recipe this weekend:
Munich Helles:
4.8kg Pilsner Malt
1.0kg Pale Malt
0.3kg Wheat Malt
0.5kg Carapils Malt

10g Northern Brewer 9.2% 110mins
10g NZ Hallertauer 4.6% First Wort Hopped
10g Tettnanger 5.6% First Wort Hopped
10g NZ Hallertauer 4.6% Dry hopped for 7 days.

The problem is I ordered only 4kg of Pilsner malt. If I brew with what I've got it would change up the base malt to specialty malt ratio and also as there's less sugar the hops would be more evident. How bad do you think it's going to be though? should I dare not even think about brewing it until I have the right ingredients or would the difference in flavour be negligable.

This recipe is supposed to give 6.4% alcohol, so on the upside using less grain means it will be lower in alcohol and I can have more than one before losing my clothes.

Professor Frink

Recipes 

6.4% seems on the high side for a Munich Helles, I would just go ahead and brew it. I'd check your pre-boil OG and you can always add a little bit of extra pale DME to the boil.

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Chad

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Plugging your recipe into Beersmith shows an original gravity of 1.060 (even with the reduced amount of pilsner malt) for a 5.5 gallon/20.83L batch. That's 10 points over the Munich Helles style.

For a 6 gallon (23L) batch, the Original Gravity of 1.065/6.3%abv drops to 1.057/5.5%abv with the reduced grain, which is still higher than a standard Munich Helles.

I wouldn't worry about it. Brew your beer with what you have.

Chad

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Muss

Recipes 

Cheers guys.

Wow 5.5% is still quite high as I'd like to be chugging these back in the sun this summer.
Does anyone have a good Munich Helles or German pilsener AG recipe that uses the same or similar ingredients?

david_42

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Why not just drop the Pale Malt? It isn't critical to the style and would bring the OG down into the middle of the range.

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Muss

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That sounds good. Can you estimate how much of the hops I should drop to keep the hop/malt balance right?

WBC

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Can't you do this for your self? Beer Smith has a trial version online? If not there are many free programs for designing beer recipes available.

www.beersmith.com

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Cheers,
WBC

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Muss

Recipes 

Yeah good point, i've been avoiding using brewing software for some time now. I'd better step up and do some work