Munich Dunkel Keck's Munich Dunkel (1st place, 2014 MCAB qualifier)

This recipe has gone through multiple versions, and this version was settled upon by me after iteratively reducing crystal malts and increasing pilsner malt until there is no crystal/CaraMunich in this recipe.

Munich Dunkel

4.5 lbs Munich Type II (10 SRM)
4 lbs German Pilsner (2 SRM)
1 lb Munich Malt (7 SRM)
.25 lb Carafa I (337.0 SRM)

1.6 oz Hellertau [4.10%] - Boil 60.0 min (21 IBU)

German Bock Lager Yeast (WLP833) - 2.5 L yeast starter on a stir plate. This resulted in a pitch rate of about 1.6 million cells / ml / degree Plato.

Mash procedure described here; please note that the Carafa is not added until the decoction mash is complete. Decoctions add a nontrivial amount of color, and if you decoct the roast malt, it makes the beer even darker. If you intend to modify and put in crystal/cara malt, I would do the same for that malt. Decocting crystal (in my opinion) drives up the toffee/caramelly notes way too high for style. I have learned both lessons the hard way.

Double decoction mash (designed to hit 131 F - 147 F - 158 F)

• Protein rest: dough in the base malt WITHOUT the Carafa with 20 qt of water @ 137 F to hit a mash temperature of 132 F [30 mins]
• Pulled first decoction of 6 quarts, heated on stove to 158 F and rested [20 mins]
• Heated decoction to boiling, and boiled for 15 minutes, reintroduced to the original mash to hit desired mash temperature of 147 F [15 mins]
• Pulled second decoction of 4.5 quarts, brought to boil, boiled for 15 minutes, and reintroduced to mash to hit temperature of 157 F; added Carafa [20 mins]

After this lauter/sparge the way you normally would. I lautered off 3.4 gallons of wort at ~1.067 from the first runnings, then did 2 rounds of batch sparging, each with 2 gallons for a total of ~7.6 gallons total lautered

Boiled for 90 mintues, cooled to ~78 F using immersion chiller in about 20 minutes. Racked into fermentor, and put in chest freezer overnight to high 48 F.

The following morning I aerated my wort with pure O2 for 30 seconds, then pitched my decanted starter into the 48 F wort, set ambient temp to 50 F, and let the beer ferment at 52 F.

After 9 days, the gravity was under 1.020, so I let the beer start to slowly warm up at a rate of 2 F per day over a few day period for a diacetyl rest. I let the beer sit at 60 F for a little over a week. After this period I cold crashed the beer 10 F per day to 40 F, then racked into a keg and put in a keezer @ 34 F. I fined the beer with gelatin the day after I put it in the keezer, and then force-carbed using the roll the keg on the floor method. I packaged it for competition about 4 days later.

This beer took first place in category 4, dark lager, in the New England Regional Homebrew Competition (NERHBC), 2014 with a score of 43.5. The judges gave pretty high marks, and only pointed to a bit of a chocolate-forward character that could be a little high for style. Otherwise, the beer hit all the marks.

I added the recipe because of the amount of research / batches this went through before really coming together, and I hoped that sharing that may help someone design their own recipe. I think the takeaways are:

• If you prefer a decoction mashing as I do, then I think you should just leave out crystal/cara altogether. The resulting beer allows the base malts to come through and has the amount of sweetness from melanoidins that is appropriate for this style.
• Having a good amount of pilsner malt to back up the Munich malt is essential because it has a high diastatic power (while Munich only has a DP of about 40), and really helps conversion in the mash. It also adds a very nice grainy character to the beer. I have done a very similar beer with all Munich as the base malt, and it comes out muddier and less crisp.
• Do not add color-adjustment malts until after decoction is done (and if you insist on using crystal malts in a decocted beer, probably a good idea to save those until decoctions are done also).

Hope this is helpful to some out there. Cheers.

View attachment Dunkel.bsmx

Looks like a nice recipe. I've been fine tuning a Dunkel and after looking at yours I think I need to boost up my Pils malt a bit more.

Interesting that you add the carafa and crystal after the decoction. How does that effect the PH?

I estimate the pH of the mash without those grains in it using EZ Water, so from a conversion stand point, I am accounting for that. Where I live our water is really soft, so for this batch I adjusted my mash with 5 g of CaCl and 1 g gypsum to hit my desired pH. This gave me over 100 ppm Ca in the mash, and plenty of chlorides in the finished beer to accentuate maltiness.

Adding those grains at the end, to my understanding, shouldn't push your sparge pH into the danger zone ( > 5.8 ) unless you're doing fly sparge; I do batch, and in that case one should not ever have an extremely diluted solution like you would near the end of a fly sparge, which I think would be the driving factor in getting into the 6-ish pH range. Plus, in this case, I only have a small amount (4 oz) of roast in a 5.5 gallon batch, which isn't much. That said, I was not taking pH readings during the process, and don't usually, so I can't speak on it for sure. If you're worried about it you could acidify the sparge water.

I first read about the practice in Gordon Strong's book, where he advocated its use in beers with a large portion of roast malt as (a) it simplifies the estimation of the mash pH if you wait and (b) it tends to produce a smoother roastiness as opposed to a more astringent one. I started using the technique for all decoction mashes recently to more reliably estimate color.

Cheers! Hope it goes well, lemme know how it turns out if you do end up brewing it.

Thanks for the recipe and the insight. You've given me some good food for thought.