Munich Malts, Recipe Tweak

Ceetar · 03-03-2010, 03:23 AM

I brewed my first (extract with grains) lager beer, an Octoberfest. I think it tastes very good, and I wanted to tweak it a bit, when I discovered that Munich grain needs to be mashed, not steeped.

Now, I used German Munich, Caramunich, and Vienna grains in the beer, but did I end up not really using any of them? I was thinking the beer needed a little less bitterness, and maybe a hint of sweetness. I was going to add a little more caramunich and add the bittering (Perle) hops a couple of minutes later. (I did 45, thinking of making that 30) Added some hallertau for 12, and vanguard for 2.

I'm not sure how to proceed. I intended to order my supplies and brew shortly. (It _is_ March after all, when you're supposed to brew Octoberfests, and I'm planning to have them ready for October 10th)

I feel like I'm just bumbling along here, which is fine, the beer tastes good and everything is a learning experience, but there is no need to spend money on these grains/this recipe if it's not adding anything.

**Pappers_** · 03-03-2010, 03:43 AM

Right, when you say "extract with grains", that's really not precise enough - there are two distinct brewing processes described by that: 1) extract with steeping grains and 2) extract with partial mash.

It seems the recipe you used, with Munich and Vienna, was a partial mash recipe. If you steeped the grains, you got some color and flavor out of them, but you did not get the fermentable sugars.

So, you need to find the right recipe, either an extract with steeping grains or a partial mash.

Ceetar · 03-03-2010, 03:51 AM

Well I made up the recipe myself, which is probably half the problem. My intent was to try to duplicate the batch I already made, so I could roughly account for how it would taste, as I'm going to be giving it as a gift.

I'm not currently set up to do a partial mash and I'm not sure I even fully understand how/what I need yet. Plus I don't have a lot of faith in being able to figure it out and get what I need in the next week or two.

The flavor was more of what I was going for really. I got the fermentables from the DME right? The beer ended up being 7.9% or so, OG of 1.080 and FG of 1.022.

What exactly is the benefit of the fermentables from the Munich/Vienna malt versus the extract?

this is the recipe I used:

yeast: wyeast 2633 | Octoberfest Lager Blend 48-58° F
hops: perle (bittering: 45min)
hallertau(flavor, 12min)
vanguard (aroma, 2min)

malt: 5 amber DME
3 light DME

Grain: 1lb vienna
1lb german munich
.5lb caramunich

I'm torn here, because I do like the taste of the beer, but I always am trying to learn and understand what I'm doing. It seems like a did make a beer, but maybe not quite the Octoberfest I was originally trying for.