Doppelbock

[CaptainZingo]

Hi,

I'm trying to make a doppelbock, my goal being a smooth, malty brew with all the "dark fruit" complexity of Celebrator. I started out by getting the
AustinHomeBrew Celebrator clone all-grain ingredients, but when they arrived I thought they were a little light on the Munich malts, so I ran out and got 2 lbs of Dark Munich to add to the mash. I had a tough time with the mash because of all the grains in my 5-gal Gott, but I managed to get through with a double decoction.

So, where I am today, 2 weeks of primary and now in the fridge at 34 for secondary, and I'm not sure if the beer is going to be anything like what I was shooting for. First, it's dark, but not quite as dark as Celebrator. Second, it has a light maltiness to it, but not a lot. Third, the alcohol flavor is monster, headache inducing after just a couple sips. My calculations show 8.5% at this point, probably because I added the extra two pounds of fermentables, and despite my attempts to bring up the main mash temp, I was still closer to 149 than 155.

Questions for those with doppelbock experience: Is this going to improve? Will the alcohol mellow and the maltiness increase if I lager it for a few months? If not, can I tweak it as I go? I was thinking about boiling up some Munich and maybe a bit of Crystal in a couple gallons to create a super non-fermentable and malty wort that I would replace a couple gallons of the beer with, and just bottle up the original and see how it ages.

Suggestions? Here's my brew log:

Base ingredients from Celebrator Doppelbock at Austin Homebrew, I added two pounds of dark Munich and decided to do a decoction mash.

Grain Bill
13.5 lbs German Pilsner
.75 lbs Munich
5 oz Chocolate
.5 lb Crystal 60L
2 lbs Dark Munich (Beer Solutions in Wilkes-Barre)

.5 lb Malto Dextrin

Hops
.75 oz Northern Brewer 11.2% 60 min
1.5 oz Hersbrucker 2.8% 60 min
.5 oz Hersbrucker 2.8% 15 min

Yeast
White Labs German Lager WLP830 (1 qt starter)

11:50 Mash in 125
12:05 Remove first decoction
12:15 good boil
12:35 Add decoction back to mash
12:45 temp still too low, removed some thin mash to boil
12:55 returned thin mash, stable at 148
01:05 removed a quarter of the mash and boiled it, tried to add boiling water to the remaining mash to bring it up to 155, still hovered around 150, eventually I had most of the mash back in the tun and started sparge. Slowest sparge ever. I tried removing all of the mash and only adding half back, still slow. Added most all mash back, had to recirc for quite a while.
4:00 still sparging, only have 16 qts. started heating wort for the boil while I sparge the rest into another pot
4:30 boilover. Up to 24 qts wort collected. added maltodextrin. still collecting a bit more wort.
4:55 back up to boil, collected 29 qts
5:10 added bittering hops
5:55 added flavor hops
6:10 stopped boil, started chilling
6:40 temp at 55, dumped to carboy, pitched yeast halfway through, foamed so much it overflowed the funnel
6:45 moved to cellar, temp 55
9:40 not much airlock activity

OG 1.086

12-23-06 - 1.022 racked to secondary, put in fridge @ 36 - alcohol aroma, light malty taste, light hop bitterness, alcohol burn

 

[dcbrewmeister]

IMO - I don't think you boiled it long enough and yes, your mash out/sparge will be the slowest one you will ever do.

Oh yeah, it will need to lager about 2 months (OR MORE!!) or it will never taste right. I do mine in march / april time frame and lager it all summer (I have 2 fridges for lagering) and enjoy it around Thanksgiving and Christmas. It takes a long time for the maltiness to come out. The alcohol flavor should subside. My first one, I taste it after fermenting and it had a real alcohol flavor to it, but it went away after about a month or so. I just taste it now just to make sure it is just not horrible and let it be. Bottle conditioning will seem to take a life time to corbonate.

Good luck on your doppelbock, it will take you a couple of brews to get it right. I start at about 9am and finish about 5pm. A good one is hard to make - you can make a malty beer, but it's not the same.

 

[CaptainZingo]

I boiled my decoctions for 15/20 minutes, and my full wort boil was close to 2 hours. Do you think I should have boiled longer? I'm thinking the Munich malt I got wasn't of the dark variety.

 

[Kaiser]

I make my Doppelbocks with light Munich or dark Munich (with maybe some Pilsner) as the base grain. The FG on the beer seems about right for where you want to be so the mash worked fine for you. The alcohol aroma/taste comes from the fermentation. How did you ferment it (oxygenation technique, pitching rate, pitching temp and fermentation temp). I sometimes this aroma of higher alcohols will go away after time, but I also had beers were it didn't go away.

As for increasing the maltiness try to increase the Munich malt. I made my last one with 90% Munich I and some Crystal and it doesn't seem malty enough. But I also noticed that the fermentation went further than I wanted it to go. There was a time when it tasted just right but after leaving it another week at 10C it dried out to much. What yeast are you using?

Kai

 

[CaptainZingo]

I used a starter of WLP830, and for oxygenation just let the wort drain from my kettle spigot through a strainer/funnel into my primary about 12 inches below. Normally I shake my fermenter, but this time I dumped my starter in halfway through draining, and it was foam city.

Primary was 13 days at about 52F.

 

[Kaiser]

I don't think that splashing does a good enough job for lager yeast. What was the size of the starter and the pitching temp?

Kai

 

[dcbrewmeister]

4:30 boilover. Up to 24 qts wort collected. added maltodextrin. still collecting a bit more wort.
4:55 back up to boil, collected 29 qts
5:10 added bittering hops
5:55 added flavor hops
6:10 stopped boil, started chilling

2 hour boil? Take out the time that your wort was not boiling and the fact that you were still collecting wort when you started boiling and it doesn't add up to 2 hours. Not trying to be over critical, but a real good doppelbock is hard for a home brewer to pull off and not just end up with a malty tasting beer.

When I do mine (been making it for 3 years now and I;m still not satisfied with it) I have a helper. After removing the mash for decoction, he boils it. It's a lot of work to do a double or triple decoction, it's even harder to do it alone.

You're trying to make the malt flavor come through, not just make a malty/sweet tasting beer.

CaptainZingo - You can use Celebrator as a good base to taste test against. Just remember one thing - theirs is probablly the blending of 2 or 3 batches and not just "We made one batch, here it is" and when you blend brew, a lot of correction that you or I never know about can happen. Color, flavor, mouth feel...

You've tasted your beer after only 2 weeks in the fermenter, try it again after at least 2 weeks, more like a month, in the secondary.

 

[dcbrewmeister]

I don't think that splashing does a good enough job for lager yeast. What was the size of the starter and the pitching temp?

Kai

6:40 temp at 55, dumped to carboy, pitched yeast halfway through

 

[dcbrewmeister]

The alcohol flavor is probablly from sitting on top of the trub for 2 weeks and will hopfully go away sitting in the secondary.

This is a good argument for a good conical fermenter - allowing you to remove some of the trub. Don't be concerned about the lack of activity in the airlock - lager yeast is a slow yeast and doesn't ferment as violantly as ale yeast does.

At what temp was your starter? Room temp? Was it "sludgey" or "liquidy"? Your starter needs to be close to wort temp when you pitch it and you need to pitch the "sludge" part of the starter.

 

[CaptainZingo]

I don't think that splashing does a good enough job for lager yeast. What was the size of the starter and the pitching temp?

Kai

The starter was a quart, but If anything I think my problem (if I have one) was too much fermentation, not too little. 8.5% abv by my calculations.

 

[CaptainZingo]

At what temp was your starter? Room temp? Was it "sludgey" or "liquidy"? Your starter needs to be close to wort temp when you pitch it and you need to pitch the "sludge" part of the starter.

The starter and wort were the same temp. I decanted the wort from the top of the starter and pitched the slurry. I know I noted in my log that there wasn't much activity after a few hours, but the next morning it was fine. I think the fermentation went well, and if anything it was too fermentable.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

The starter was a quart, but If anything I think my problem (if I have one) was too much fermentation, not too little. 8.5% abv by my calculations.

There's not a direct correlation there between starter size and FG, although too small of a starter may lead to higher than expected FG.

You want to pitch a large starter with lagers (4qts and up) to avoid the esters and fusel alcohols that may be generated during the early stages of fermentation. The alcohol notes in your beer may be due to this.

 

[CaptainZingo]

2 hour boil? Take out the time that your wort was not boiling and the fact that you were still collecting wort when you started boiling and it doesn't add up to 2 hours. Not trying to be over critical, but a real good doppelbock is hard for a home brewer to pull off and not just end up with a malty tasting beer.

You're right, I guess some of the wort boiled for 2 hours, and some for an hour. Still, the recipe to me seemed really light on dark malts to get a Celebrator color, don't you think?

When I do mine (been making it for 3 years now and I;m still not satisfied with it) I have a helper. After removing the mash for decoction, he boils it. It's a lot of work to do a double or triple decoction, it's even harder to do it alone.

Yeah, this was a lot of work, no doubt, and I think I'll never try to put that much grain in my 5-gal Gott again. Still, this beer is now my holy grail so I will keep trying!

You can use Celebrator as a good base to taste test against. Just remember one thing - theirs is probablly the blending of 2 or 3 batches and not just "We made one batch, here it is" and when you blend brew, a lot of correction that you or I never know about can happen. Color, flavor, mouth feel...

Celebrator is my goal, I know I'm aiming high for only having started brewing 4 months ago. I've tasted Salvator and Optimator, and to me they are so different from Celebrator and not what I'm trying to get to. Actually Salvator is closer to what my beer looks/tastes like now.

Your blending point is really what I'm aiming at with this post. I'm wondering if that technique would help me to layer the flavors to get the complexity I want.

You've tasted your beer after only 2 weeks in the fermenter, try it again after at least 2 weeks, more like a month, in the secondary.

Yes, patience. I've learned that lesson with many of my brews. Of course, if I'm going to have to wait six months to see how it turns out, my philosopy is to have a few tries in the pipeline instead of starting over every six months. That's why I'm trying to get feedback whether I'm in the right spot for this stage in the process, whether I can tweak, or whether I should start a new batch with a different approach. I'll fill this whole basement up with carboys if I have to!

 

[CaptainZingo]

You want to pitch a large starter with lagers (4qts and up) to avoid the esters and fusel alcohols that may be generated during the early stages of fermentation. The alcohol notes in your beer may be due to this.

I think you're right, and this is something I will definitely do differently next time.

 

[dcbrewmeister]

There's not a direct correlation there between starter size and FG, although too small of a starter may lead to higher than expected FG.

You want to pitch a large starter with lagers (4qts and up) to avoid the esters and fusel alcohols that may be generated during the early stages of fermentation. The alcohol notes in your beer may be due to this.

I was going to mention that fact (and thought I did ) and it's very good point.

 

[dcbrewmeister]

You're right, I guess some of the wort boiled for 2 hours, and some for an hour. Still, the recipe to me seemed really light on dark malts to get a Celebrator color, don't you think?

You're going to make me go out and buy one just to see - damn-it, now I gotta go buy a beer - or 2

Yeah, this was a lot of work, no doubt, and I think I'll never try to put that much grain in my 5-gal Gott again. Still, this beer is now my holy grail so I will keep trying!

I took it as a challange when I started just because people told me a noob I couldn't do it:rockin:

Celebrator is my goal, I know I'm aiming high for only having started brewing 4 months ago. I've tasted Salvator and Optimator, and to me they are so different from Celebrator and not what I'm trying to get to. Actually Salvator is closer to what my beer looks/tastes like now.

Take it as a stepping stone to get to where you want it.

Your blending point is really what I'm aiming at with this post. I'm wondering if that technique would help me to layer the flavors to get the complexity I want.

Yes. Blend a not-so-good brew with a really good brew and it will help balance out the not-so-good one. As long as the not-so-good one is not just plain YUK!!!

Budweiser does it every day

Yes, patience. I've learned that lesson with many of my brews. Of course, if I'm going to have to wait six months to see how it turns out, my philosopy is to have a few tries in the pipeline instead of starting over every six months. That's why I'm trying to get feedback whether I'm in the right spot for this stage in the process, whether I can tweak, or whether I should start a new batch with a different approach. I'll fill this whole basement up with carboys if I have to!

Fill the basement huh.... ok, dedication. You're on the right track, refine your lager skills (it's a different beast) Read over John Palmers How to brew http://www.howtobrew.com and maybe get some of his recomended readings for lagers and lagering.

Don't get rushed in your process for making the lagers - you can't, they will fight you all the way. Get a 10gal cooler for mashing - it's a lot of grain for a 5gal cooler. You will be stirring the mash very slowly almost constantly and a 10 gal cooler will give you more room to do it.

I'm designing my stand around/for this very beer, so I think it will help perfect my doppelbock. Oh gawd, now it's an obsession...

 

[dcbrewmeister]

Ok, so I got my Celebrator - uhhh, had my Celebrator(s) 'cuz they come in a 4 pack ya' know.

Very dark, very malty, very good. Just like when I used to buy it all the time. hehe - mines getting close.

I'm getting ready to brew it again in about a month, I may be convinced to share my recipe (with changes) to get you closer... (privately)

 

[Kaiser]

Your blending point is really what I'm aiming at with this post. I'm wondering if that technique would help me to layer the flavors to get the complexity I want.

Though blending is common commercial practice, it is not used to fix large differences in taste and I don't think that it is a practical approach for the home brewer other than trying to salvage some beer. Keep making it and keep tasting it against commercial examples that you like. Also try to get as many information on the commercial example as you can: ABV, attenuation, limit of attenuation, bitterness. The latter one is the most difficult since home brewers don't tend to get the IBUs of a beer analyzed.

One other aspect to keep in mind is that large commercial breweries are not using a lot of specialty malts in their grist. This is simply a historic thing as well as an economical one since they would need separate storage for all these specialty grains. A lot of the flavor nuances might be derived from the process which can only be partially copied.

Interesting how most American home brewers like the Celebrator. I like the Optimator or Salvator more b/c I find the roastiness in the Celebrator overpowering.

Kai

 

[CaptainZingo]

Interesting how most American home brewers like the Celebrator. I like the Optimator or Salvator more b/c I find the roastiness in the Celebrator overpowering.

Kai

I don't taste a lot of roastiness in Celebrator, but then my favorite styles are all roasty stouts and porters. I like the dark fruits and the malty aroma, especially when it warms up.

I'm getting ready to put another batch together based on this recipe:

http://hbd.org/discus/messages/26895/31094.html?1121109835

My LHBS didn't have the Durst, but I'm trying it with Weyermann. I got a Barley Crusher for xmas, so I'm looking forward to using that. Also, this time I have a big starter going. I kept the slurry from my last batch in the fridge, and it's sitting on 3 qts of wort right now, bubbling away. I also picked up a fridge, so I'll have better temp control for my primary. The last batch was in the basement, and it's been a little warm this winter. The only thing I'm worried about is my mash again, since I don't have the 10-gal set up yet. I'm thinking I might mash in a couple of kettles on the stove, and just lauter in my cooler.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I'm getting ready to put another batch together based on this recipe:

http://hbd.org/discus/messages/26895/31094.html?1121109835

That looks like a good recipe, although I'm sure you realize there aren't any roasted grains in it, so you'll likely get something closer to Optimator rather than Celebrator.