Grain bills for German beers from Steve Holle's presentation

[dfhar]

I was going through some old NHC presentations yesterday and found Steve Holle's talk from 2008 on German brewing techniques:

http://www.ahaconference.org/wp-content/uploads/presentations/2008/SteveHolle_GermanBrewing.pdf

I thought it contained a lot of very good, very detailed information, including detailed recipes for several commercial beers and grain bill ratios for many more (the original source is credited to Narziss from a 1990 issue of Brauwelt). Two things that really struck me about the recipes were:

1. Many of them call for a small amount (< 5%) of caramel malt, typically carahell or caramunich or a mix.

2. Many of them employ late hop additions.

Many of the German lager recipes I see American homebrewers following tend to eschew caramel malts completely, and use predominantly bittering hop additions, especially for beers like helles. Maybe a little carahell is worth trying, though!

 

[BigEd]

There's nothing wrong with a little caramel malt in German beers. Obviously Weyermann and the other German maltsters aren't making all that CaraHell, CaraVienna, CaraMunich and others to simply supply the American homebrew market. The catch, IMO, is to use it discretely and to accomplish a distinct goal of a color, flavor, or texture tweak.

 

[TheHairyHop]

I've been getting into german beer since I got a ferm chamber. I'll have to take a look at those dunkel recipes.

 

[beersk]

Interesting. I'd rather use a little Munich or Vienna instead of cara malts. Late hopping makes sense. American breweries miss the mark when it comes to good German style lagers, I think.

 

[Schumed]

Steve is an awesome resource on German beers and is willing to answer questions ...if you are ever in KC check out his brewery KC Bier CO

 

[BigEd]

Interesting. I'd rather use a little Munich or Vienna instead of cara malts. Late hopping makes sense. American breweries miss the mark when it comes to good German style lagers, I think.

Definitely agree. Not all but many American versions of German brews, homebrew and commercial, tend to overuse crystal and other specialty malts. Combined with other cheats like not paying for German base malt and short cutting on some Old World techniques I've yet to taste any, other than a couple of homebrews, that matched or came close to the profile of a German-brewed beer.

 

[dfhar]

Definitely agree. Not all but many American versions of German brews, homebrew and commercial, tend to overuse crystal and other specialty malts. Combined with other cheats like not paying for German base malt and short cutting on some Old World techniques I've yet to taste any, other than a couple of homebrews, that matched or came close to the profile of a German-brewed beer.

I completely agree with this. I have never, ever had an American craft brewed German style lager that was on par with what I had fresh in Bavaria. American craft attempts are often over hopped with a harsh bitterness that's very un-German yet lack the clean noble hop aroma of the real thing. They're often too sweet, yet very dull and very lacking in real malt flavor. Oh, and they never seem to pull of the huge, frothy head either.

Having toured lots of micros, I can say that I rarely see Weyermann bags, the brewers usually say they don't bother step mashing, and the fermenters are not set up for krausen removal during fermentation. I don't know how large of an impact any one of the process differences makes by itself, but the German breweries do many things a lot differently then US micros and they sure end up with a different product.

 

[AlfA01]

I add a little bit of cara malts to almost all of my beers. Of course, depending on the color I'm looking for, I add a tad more or less. For light colored recipes I use carapils extensively. Typically I add it to create mouth feel and head retention.

Cheers,
Dan