dunkelweizen ingredient questions

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Marauder

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Just a quick question for anybody experienced in this style, or with a high amount of Munich in a recipe.

dunkelweizen- correction - black wit
15.5 Gal
Rough estimate at 75% efficiency should be around 1.050

Mashing at 152 for 60

50% 14.0 lbs White Wheat Malt
18% 5 lbs Munich 10l
18%. 5 lbs Belgian pilsner
11% 3.0 lbs Flaked Wheat
2% 12 oz Briess Midnight Wheat
1% 4 oz Roasted Barley @ mash out

Hops:

60 min - 2oz German hallertau
30 min - 1oz German hallertau

14.5 Ibu


Other Ingredients:

boil 5 min 1 ½ oz Coriander, Cracked
boil 5 min 3 tsp Grains of Paradise
boil 5 min 3 oz Orange Peel, Sweet

So my question is because this used to be a belgian witbier recipe(I have made some changes to convert it to a dunkel) My wit was really good so that is why I'm kind of using it as a base for developing the dunkel recipe. So from what I can tell from the bjcp descriptions the biggest difference from a Heffe to Dunk is after your 50% malted wheat the other base malt is munich rather than pilsner. So I removed the pilsner from my witbier and replace with Munich.

My question: Do I still need to retain some pilsner malt, or can, and should I swap it all for Munich like I did above?

Any thoughts or advice would be great guys thanks.
 
I find it odd that no one wanted to help me out here. Come on HBT haha
 
Munich is a base malt, so you can use it up to 100%. If it were me, I'd ditch the spices, OJ, and roasted barley and add a little bit of caramunich or something similar. And swap out some of the Munich for pilsener. But to each his own :mug:
 
zachattack said:
Munich is a base malt, so you can use it up to 100%. If it were me, I'd ditch the spices, OJ, and roasted barley and add a little bit of caramunich or something similar. And swap out some of the Munich for pilsener. But to each his own :mug:

Thanks for the suggestions. The Munich - pilsner thing is my biggest concern. I know it's a base, but is it significantly more malty and sweet than pils? This is what I'm concerned about, I don't want it overly malty and sweet. Is that why you say I should swap some back to pils?

I understand why you suggest dropping the spices and OJ. They are just still there from when the recipe was more of a Belgian witbier. It worked really well in that, but yeah I think you are right it won't be so good here. So I am dropping the OJ, but I'm just curious why drop the roasted barley? I am not saying it is a bad suggestion, it may be a very good one, I just want to better understand why.
 
First of all: Munich is very rich, bready and malty, but it's not sweet like a caramel malt. It's full of melanoidins, think whole wheat bread crust flavors. Pilsner is more of a light, delicate "grainy" bready flavor. Munich is one of my favorite malts, and there are plenty of recipes that use it as 100% of the grist. Keeping some pilsner will keep the color a little lighter and prevent the Munich flavor from overpowering things. But it's entirely up to you. You could check out the recipe forum for some tried-and-true DW recipes if you want, and go from there.

Roasted barley gives a strong roasted "bite" that's appropriate in a lot of styles (stout, a tiny bit in an Irish Red, maybe a hint in a brown ale, etc.) but I don't think of a roasted bite as being appropriate for a dunkleweizen where the focus should be on the wheat, rich malty flavors from the Munich, some sweetness, and plenty of hefeweizen yeast character. The midnight wheat that you have in there should add a more mild roast flavor and plenty of color, so IMO I'd skip the roast barley. But if you like it that way, brew it up! You're the one drinking it, not me. Haha.
 
I really appreciate the advice, I wasn't trying to say I should keep it, or even wanted to. I assure you I have no sentimental attachment to the roasted barley haha it wasn't in my original Heffe recipe, so I don't know if I would like it in this. I added it to recipe when I started changing the recipe for the purpose of making this a dunkel, I just have some left over from a few stouts, and figured oh this should make it dark, but if the chocolate and midnight wheat will probably give enough color, and the roast bite from the barley is going to be too much and thus not appropriate to style, I definitely should take it out, thanks for pointing this out to me.
 
No problem!

Since I'm pretty new to the whole recipe formulation thing, I usually look at Jamil's recipes from the book Brewing Classic Styles. It's a great point of reference and a source of proven, competition-ready recipes. So it's a great starting point if you're new to the style.

It looks like this is basically Jamil's DW recipe:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/dunkelweizen-64392/

The carafa special is a duhusked black malt, your midnight wheat should be very similar. Otherwise he uses a little crystal malt (some C40 and Special B).
 
Here is the recipe for a 5 gallon batch I used for mine. It's sitting and fermenting now but sample tasted great and very good color.

5 lbs. Weyermann Dark Wheat malt
3.5 lbs. German Pilsner malt
1 lbs. German Dark Munich malt
0.5 lbs. Weyermann Caramunich II
0.25 lbs. Special B
 
Thanks guys, special B seems common maybe I should consider this

After more research, I have determined I still won't be able to call this a dunkelweizen. Being the original recipe is a Belgian wit not a Heffe that makes this a dark Belgian witbier? Haha a black wit, I would likely have to enter it into competitions as a Belgian specialty ale.
 
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