Chocolate or Black in a Pils?

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Glibbidy

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I'm in the process of designing a black Pilsener. Ideally My reasearch says Carafa III would be the way to go. What if you didn't have Carafa III. How much black or chocolate would you use with without going overboard?
 
I thought the whole point of carafa III in a black pils was that it was de-husked so it added color without roast flavor? Black or chocolate would be different...
 
Have you seen Jamil's award winning recipe?http://beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/The_Jamil_Show_-_Schwarzbier.html
I didn't think you could use chocolate or black, but he uses both and even says some judges state that it's lacking some roastiness!
You can get a lot of color by using Munich as part of the base malt. If you do a double decoction the wort would darken considerably and you wouldn't need that much carafa or black malt.
 
orfy said:
Have you run a recipe through a calculator?
Will 1% get the colour?

I don't have one of them fancy calculators. I put 1% choclate in my alt and that gives it a really deep brown.

Here's what I'm considering for the grain bill:
55% German Pilsener malt
39% Munich Malt
5% Crystal
.5% Black
.5% Chocolate

Maybe even up the chocolate to 1%. I'm doing at least a single decoction, and will consid a double decoction if time permits.
 
Is this for this weekend?

I've been wanting to do a Black IPA for a while, without any roastiness coming through, so I'm interested in this. I have a few bottles of Stone 11th Anniversary to share this weekend (I'm going to pick up a few more if I can find any, to cellar), which sounds like it might be right in the wheelhouse of what I'd like to make.
 
Glibbidy said:
I don't have one of them fancy calculators. I put 1% choclate in my alt and that gives it a really deep brown.

Here's what I'm considering for the grain bill:
55% German Pilsener malt
39% Munich Malt
5% Crystal
.5% Black
.5% Chocolate

Maybe even up the chocolate to 1%. I'm doing at least a single decoction, and will consid a double decoction if time permits.

With just some quick calculation you are gonna need alot more dark grains to get there. What crystal are you gonna go with?
 
7 Pils
5 Munich
0.25 BP
0.25 Choc

At 75% efficiency, gets you to 1.069 and 23SRM. That's 2% each BP and choc, which I doubt would be too noticable. Cut those to 1/8 each (1%), and you're only at 16SRM. So, I'm thinking at least 3% total to the dark malts (although I'm not factoring in the impact of decocting, or maybe include a wee bit of dark crystal/Special B for color and a little background malt note?).

EDIT: 1.6% BP, 1.6% Choc (0.20# in 5 gallons), plus 2% (.25#) Special B, gets you back to 23.3 SRM; pretty close to black.

EDIT 2: I missed the crytal; what lovibond?
 
With the crystal at 4.9% of the grist, 1.5% choc and 1.5% BP (0.20# each) gets you in that same neighborhood. At half a percent each, you're still brown (16 SRM)
 
I'm thinking about brewing this Friday night. Prolly go Belgian on Sunday
So 23 SRM would be on the low side. 16 SRM is definitely brown. Sounds like in order to really make it work I'll need to break down and get the Carafa. Time to shift gears.
 
Okay, so now I have decide to do a 180. I'm simply going to go ahead and use 100% pils malt on this batch, and wait until I can get some carafa in my hot little hands.
 
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