2nd Brew Advice - Dunkelweizen

[DaPearl9]

Hey everyone, I'm not getting any hits with this on the recipe forum so thought I'd try here. My first home brew is nearing the end of primary fermentation and my roommate and I are getting ready to start our next batch. We were thinking of a Dunkelweizen and after looking at a few recipes I've put this list together:

6 lbs. Wheat Dry Malt Extract
1 lbs. Light Dry Malt Extract
1.5 lbs. Muntons Dark Crystal Grain
.5 lbs. Black Patent Grain (lightly crushed)
1 oz. Northern Brewer Hop Pellets (60 min)
.5 oz. Hallertauer Hop Pellets (30 min)
.5 oz. Hallertauer Hop Pellets (5 min)
Liquid Wyeast 3068

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to improve upon this recipe. I was considering adding in Chocolate Malt Grain (making it .25 Black Patent and .25 Chocolate) but just put in chocolate here since we have some left over from the Brown Ale (also why I made it 1.5 lbs. Dark Crystal as opposed to 1 lb).

Brewing plans would be steeping the grain for 60 minutes with a light sparging before boiling the rest of the malts.

Fermentation temperature would be around 66-68 degrees given control limits within our apartment.

Can any more experienced brewers impart any wisdom on this recipe?

 

[android]

dunkelweizen's can range considerably in their dunkel-ness. yours looks like it will be pretty dark with that black patent and dark crystal. erdinger comes to mind as a pretty dark dunkelweizen.

i used chocolate in mine and it added nice color, not too dark, and a subtle flavor.

the hops look right. and the yeast should be really nice. the weinstephan dunkel weisse isn't as dark as some others, but the yeast should lend nicely to any dunkelweizen.

with the steeping/partial mash, i'd shoot for about 150-155. and definitely do the sparging.

 

[DaPearl9]

Thanks for the advice, particularly on the partial mash temperature since that's something I have little mastery over. I might spring for the chocolate malt at the store tomorrow. Mostly I'm using the black patent since we already have some and we're dirt poor. I guess we'll see how much we spend on other stuff but if we forgo the chocolate we'll be very careful not to use too much black patent and not crush them too much.