Suggest a Schwarzbier Recipe/Ingredients for Me

I'm thinking this would be a good time to start a nice schwarzbier so I can have it ready for the holiday season. Can any lager brewers out there recommend a more "unique" lager yeast by Wyeast that will produce a good schwarz? By unique, I mean more flavor characteristics than your average lager yeast. Right now, I'm considering the Bavarian lager yeast, but I'm not set.

Besides that, can anyone recommend a good recipe for a schwarzbier? I already have an idea of just having a good bit of pilsen malt as a base, maybe with some vienna or munich and some chocolate wheat with black malt to finish it off. Also considering putting a hint of candi sugar in as an experiment.

While I'm no expert on Teutonic lager biers, I've read up on the subject and brewed a few.

So far as I can tell, Schwartzbier is basically a standard ol' lager that's, well, schwartz. Thus, a base of Pils malt, maybe some Vienna or Munich, and a dark malt for color. You want to avoid roasted-malt flavor, however; thus, one of the Weyermann Carafa malts seems to be in order.

I'll consult my sources and confirm that.

Prost,

Bob

i've never brewed a schwarzbier but i'd like to suggest using some of the dehusked carafe malt. i think that would help to give it that really smooth chocolatey flavor good schwarzbiers have.

I'm hardly a lager expert (don't really care to drink them either ), but here's Jamil's recipe:

A ProMash Recipe - The Jamil Show - Schwarzbier

I doubt it will ready for the holidays though- it'll likely need a long lagering, I should think.

Jamil has a very solid recipe for this style. Keep in mind, if you are trying to get the traditional flavor, you will need to do at least a single decoction, but would really benefit from a double. I have heard you can bypass this by using aromatic malt to get a lot of the decoction characteristics in the beer. I would assume you would only want 0.5 - 1 lb per 5 gallon batch.

I would also urge you to try the Saflager S23, it is perhaps the only dry lager yeast I have ever used that I would say is comparable to a liquid.

I got gold medal with this one:

BeerTools.com Recipe Library - Schwarzbier 10 2005