Munich Dunkel

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strick88

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Ok so I haven’t brewed in 6 months due to having a child, buying a house, dropping my claw hammer and breaking it. So I bought a Grainfather as a Christmas gift to myself. I have wanted to brew a Dunkel for awhile just have no way to control my fermentation temp. So I reached out to my LHBS for some advice and he recommended lellamand classic Munich for it. I just feel it will miss the target profile.
My grain build is 9# Munich malt, 1# Vienna malt, and 0.35# carafa II. With the Yeast what could I expect with this brew and first time using it I have to ask is the sulfuric smell 7 days into fermentation normal?
 
Fermentis S-189 German lager will give you a nice, malty profile, and will be dead clean up into the low 60s. So, if you have any place where it doesn't get too warm, you will be very pleased with the final product.
 
Fermentis S-189 German lager will give you a nice, malty profile, and will be dead clean up into the low 60s. So, if you have any place where it doesn't get too warm, you will be very pleased with the final product.

I used Munich classic though that’s the issue lol
 
I'd say you're in for something interesting. When you said "Dunkel", LHBS must've thought "Ah, he surely means Dunkelweiss". I wouldn't expect this to turn out too tasty, but look what happened when that guy got his chocolate in that other guy's peanut butter...

The characteristic German wheat beers have a very distinct taste, and that is always attributed to the yeast. So you're probably in for something like that. HOWEVER, all those beers are brewed with a lot of wheat, which you don't have. Maybe the same flavors won't develop without the wheat. I suspect you'd probably end up with a beer that tastes like a watery Weiss beer, with the malt not able to back up the significant flavor characteristics of that yeast.

I like your grain bill if you had gotten the clean lager yeast you were looking for. I made a delicious lager last year that was 50/50 2-row Brewer's Malt & Munich (plus a splash of wheat) and used WLP830 German Lager yeast. I've found substantial differences in Munich malts, though. I used Weyerman for years whenever I needed Munich, and then once I started using Munich more and more, I bought a 55-lb bag of Avangard Munich. I found the Avangard Munch much sweeter, and re-brews of previous great recipes didn't come out so good. So now I'm back to Weyerman Munich, and just accepting the price hit.
 
I'd say you're in for something interesting. When you said "Dunkel", LHBS must've thought "Ah, he surely means Dunkelweiss". I wouldn't expect this to turn out too tasty, but look what happened when that guy got his chocolate in that other guy's peanut butter...

The characteristic German wheat beers have a very distinct taste, and that is always attributed to the yeast. So you're probably in for something like that. HOWEVER, all those beers are brewed with a lot of wheat, which you don't have. Maybe the same flavors won't develop without the wheat. I suspect you'd probably end up with a beer that tastes like a watery Weiss beer, with the malt not able to back up the significant flavor characteristics of that yeast.

I like your grain bill if you had gotten the clean lager yeast you were looking for. I made a delicious lager last year that was 50/50 2-row Brewer's Malt & Munich (plus a splash of wheat) and used WLP830 German Lager yeast. I've found substantial differences in Munich malts, though. I used Weyerman for years whenever I needed Munich, and then once I started using Munich more and more, I bought a 55-lb bag of Avangard Munich. I found the Avangard Munch much sweeter, and re-brews of previous great recipes didn't come out so good. So now I'm back to Weyerman Munich, and just accepting the price hit.
Yeah that’s kinda I feel. I think I said Dunkel and it was automatically that idea of a dunkelweisse. I’m gunna let it run it’s course and check it out. Someone said it could be a dampfbier idea so maybe
 
You are the 3rd person (including myself) i know of who went Munich Dunkel on their first brew on the new machine. My Dunkel came out way too roasty, still drank and enjoyed it though.

Sulfur smell is normal. Leave it at least two weeks, it will go away. You may be on to something here! Give it enough time to condition and make proper notes so you can repeat it when it turns out fantastic. Higher temps may give you some banana. I have used Munich Classic in hefeweizen, it sometimes comes out a bit tart in the beginning, not sure if this is because of the wheat malt, but either way it conditions out so don't stress about this either.

Also, please remember to post your result!

In terms of lager yeast without temp control W 34/70 is the answer. Next time!
 
You made a dark Dampfbier, or a dark Hefeweizen without the Weizen (wheat). It's going to be good, more like a Weissbier obviously, but still a good beer. Congratulations on brewing your first historic German beer (Dampfbier). It is basically a wheat beer without the wheat.
 
You made a dark Dampfbier, or a dark Hefeweizen without the Weizen (wheat). It's going to be good, more like a Weissbier obviously, but still a good beer. Congratulations on brewing your first historic German beer (Dampfbier). It is basically a wheat beer without the wheat.

I guess that's a good thing. lol I feel like a fool for no looking into my recipe better but thats what happens when excitement over runs
 
I always wondered what a "wheat beer" without wheat, but with that yeast would taste like. never brave enough to try it. I too will be waiting for the results. It's my go to for my wheat beers. I always make sure I have my blow off tube set-up ready, it can be quite explosive, not sure if wheat has anything to do with that though.
Cheers, :mug:
Joel B.
 
I always wondered what a "wheat beer" without wheat, but with that yeast would taste like. never brave enough to try it. I too will be waiting for the results. It's my go to for my wheat beers. I always make sure I have my blow off tube set-up ready, it can be quite explosive, not sure if wheat has anything to do with that though.
Cheers, :mug:
Joel B.
Wheat brings a lot of those phenolic precursors. So without the wheat, there should be less of that. What I am asking myself is, what if one replaces the wheat with corn? Corn also brings these precursors.

I will invent a new beer! Hold my beer! I got an idea!
 
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I could drink a wheat beer if the wheat was removed. None of my group likes wheat beers. Unless we are in a bar in Brussels.
 
Wheat brings a lot of those phenolic precursors. So without the wheat, there should be less of that. What I am asking myself is, what if one replaces the wheat with corn? Corn also brings these precursors.

I will invent a new beer! Hold my beer! I got an idea!

Dampfcornbier - ha! Sounds like a DMS bomb
 
A while back, I brewed an extract semi-hefeweizen. But I used Lallemand Munich Wheat yeast, which isn't a true hefe yeast. I had some Nut Brown ale ready to drink at the same time, and I tried mixing the two 50-50. It was really good. So now I have plans to brew a batch using a split to the hefe and Nut Brown extracts, and using just the Lallemand Munich Wheat yeast. It won't be the same as what I mixed together since it will have only the one yeast. I'll brew it in a couple of months and see how it turns out. It might have some similarity to the OP's beer.
 
Here's a fairly recent article that appeared on the Daft Eejit Brewing website:


BEER STYLES, HISTORY
ABOUT DAMPFBIER
NOVEMBER 22, 2020
So, the story of Dampfbier (lit. steam beer) goes like this… a 19th century Bavarian brewer who didn’t have a permit to brew with wheat malt instead brewed one with only lightly kilned barley malt and fermented it with a Weißbier yeast. As the beer was vigorously fermenting, it looked like steam coming off the beer, hence the name “Dampfbier”.

The problem here is… if a beer style’s origin story sounds too good to be true, it probably is not actually rooted in history. Naive me would simply ask why other beers like Weißbier brewed with wheat malt wouldn’t be called the same name because supposedly, the yeast would ferment as vigorous. When we actually look at historic sources though, an entirely different picture is unveiled:

One very early mention of Dampfbier can be found in Landwirthschaftliches ConversationsLexicon für Praktiker und Laien from 1837. The meaning is a different one, though: it is used to describe beer that was brewed using steam coming from a steam boiler as a heat source for mashing as well as boiling the wort. In that particular case, brewing itself really seemed more of a side business, as most of the article is about how the steam boiler was used in a distillery in Galicia that made Polish distilled spirit from potatoes, supposedly what would be called wodka nowadays.

Philipp Heiss, former brewmaster at Spaten brewery and author of Die Bierbrauerei mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Dickmaischbrauerei (1853), added a small section in his book about brewing with steam. He sees two main applications: to use steam engines as a power source to steadily drive all kinds of machines in a brewery, and to use the steam as a direct or indirect heat source. He talked about several attempts to brew beer using steam, in particular brewer Zacherl (Paulaner) in Munich and Wanka in Prague, but classified both as less than successful. Heiss described Dampfbier as getting sour more quickly, and in total definitely wasn’t convinced about the technique.

Differences between beer brewed with steam vs. those with fire as heat source remained a hot topic in the decades to follow. In Dingler’s Polytechnisches Journal, a 1889 article lists a few experimental results. At Berlin’s Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei (VLB), the amount of fuel required to brew beer using steam was determined to be significantly less than using direct firing, certainly one good argument in favour of steam. In addition, Schloßbrauerei in Schöneberg conducted an experiment to directly compare lager beer brewed using fire with beer of the same type brewed using steam, and the differences were negligible, “contrary to the widespread prejudice that Dampfbier was less full-bodied”.

I could go one like this, but when looking at historic sources, one thing becomes very clear very quickly: Dampfbier in the 19th century purely referred to beer brewed using steam as a heat source, not barley beers fermented with Weißbier yeast.

Even when looking at more recent sources about Dampfbier, it becomes very clear that very few such beers ever existed. A few prominent examples that I was able to find were Maisel’s Dampfbier (Michael Jackson briefly mentioned it as an “ale-like specialty”), Dampfbier from 1. Dampfbierbrauerei Zwiesel (which also seems to be the source of the supposed origin story of the Dampfbier style), and Borbecker Helles Dampfbier, for which is not even clear whether this is actually a top-fermented beer using Weißbier yeast. Besides these three beers, there’s not much around.

So, what can be said to vindicate the beer style? Beer brewed from pale barley malt and fermented using Weißbier yeast definitely existed and is well-documented. Friedrich Meyer mentioned Weißbier brewed from pale barley malt, sometimes with the addition of small amounts of wheat malt in his books, e.g. 1830 Die bayerische Bierbrauerei. The 1847 edition of this book even makes a distinction between weißes Gerstenbier (white barley beer) and weißes Weitzenbier (white wheat beer), but also explains that the term Weißbiercommonly refers to the former.

So, in that sense, the beer style that some people nowadays call Dampfbier definitely existed. It just used to be called Weißbier (white beer), and has nothing to do with the historic understanding of Dampfbier as a beer brewed using steam. Personally, I’m just unhappy with the term as it is confusing, it gives credence to the too-good-to-be-true origin story, and it hides the much more complex history of white beers in Bavaria.
 
The wheat beers I’ve had really are hit and miss. A lot have that phenolic taste that I find hard to choke down. Really wrecks a beer experience in my opinion.

I brewed a clone of Widmer Hefeweizen once which had a huge wheat bill. I think they use an Altbier yeast if I recall - I harvested mine from several bottles. Worked fine, the beer was identical to Widmer and fantastic.

This makes me think a lot of that phenolic taste attributed to some wheat beers is yeast derived. Either that or it works with the wheat to derive those phenolic flavors that I can’t stand.
 
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The wheat beers I’ve had really are hit and miss. A lot have that phenolic taste that I find hard to choke down. Really wrecks a beer experience in my opinion.

I brewed a clone of Widmer Hefewizen once which had a huge wheat bill. I think they use an Altbier yeast if I recall - I harvested mine from several bottles. Worked fine, the beer was identical to Widmer and fantastic.

This makes me think a lot of that phenolic taste attributed to some wheat beers is yeast derived. Either that or it works with the wheat to derive those phenolic flavors that I can’t stand.
You find the precursors of this phenolic flavor predominantly in wheat and corn. Without that, the yeast cannot create it. But it is indeed, yeast derived, not all yeasts create this flavour out of the precursors.

It's a classical taste of German wheat beer, I really like it and prefer the phenolic wheat beers over the banana bombs.

But as usual when it comes to taste, it's a matter of ones own preferences.
 
It's a classical taste of German wheat beer, I really like it and prefer the phenolic wheat beers over the banana bombs.

I agree banana is not my thing either.
That's why my favorite Weizen from a big Brewery is Schneider.
Going further off topic now but the thread has already been kidnapped :ghostly:

Yeast choice and mash schedule promote either banana or phenolic (clove) flavors.
Adding a so-called ferulic acid rest at 109–113 °F (43–45 °C) brings out more clove flavors.
You can look it up to see why, including 4-vinyl-guaiacol in the search.

Under pitching the yeast and higher fermentation temperatures are also ways of promoting the banana flavor.
This stresses the yeast and they produce banana esters as a side product.
Also happens with some Belgian strains (Chimay)
 
I agree banana is not my thing either.
That's why my favorite Weizen from a big Brewery is Schneider.
Going further off topic now but the thread has already been kidnapped :ghostly:

Yeast choice and mash schedule promote either banana or phenolic (clove) flavors.
Adding a so-called ferulic acid rest at 109–113 °F (43–45 °C) brings out more clove flavors.
You can look it up to see why, including 4-vinyl-guaiacol in the search.

Under pitching the yeast and higher fermentation temperatures are also ways of promoting the banana flavor.
This stresses the yeast and they produce banana esters as a side product.
Also happens with some Belgian strains (Chimay)
That is actually also my personal favourite :)

Good choice!
 
I'll be brewing this a little later in the monyh.
Screenshot_20220113-100818.png
 
Here's a fairly recent article that appeared on the Daft Eejit Brewing website:


BEER STYLES, HISTORY
ABOUT DAMPFBIER
NOVEMBER 22, 2020
So, the story of Dampfbier (lit. steam beer) goes like this… a 19th century Bavarian brewer who didn’t have a permit to brew with wheat malt instead brewed one with only lightly kilned barley malt and fermented it with a Weißbier yeast. As the beer was vigorously fermenting, it looked like steam coming off the beer, hence the name “Dampfbier”.

The problem here is… if a beer style’s origin story sounds too good to be true, it probably is not actually rooted in history. Naive me would simply ask why other beers like Weißbier brewed with wheat malt wouldn’t be called the same name because supposedly, the yeast would ferment as vigorous. When we actually look at historic sources though, an entirely different picture is unveiled:

One very early mention of Dampfbier can be found in Landwirthschaftliches ConversationsLexicon für Praktiker und Laien from 1837. The meaning is a different one, though: it is used to describe beer that was brewed using steam coming from a steam boiler as a heat source for mashing as well as boiling the wort. In that particular case, brewing itself really seemed more of a side business, as most of the article is about how the steam boiler was used in a distillery in Galicia that made Polish distilled spirit from potatoes, supposedly what would be called wodka nowadays.

Philipp Heiss, former brewmaster at Spaten brewery and author of Die Bierbrauerei mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Dickmaischbrauerei (1853), added a small section in his book about brewing with steam. He sees two main applications: to use steam engines as a power source to steadily drive all kinds of machines in a brewery, and to use the steam as a direct or indirect heat source. He talked about several attempts to brew beer using steam, in particular brewer Zacherl (Paulaner) in Munich and Wanka in Prague, but classified both as less than successful. Heiss described Dampfbier as getting sour more quickly, and in total definitely wasn’t convinced about the technique.

Differences between beer brewed with steam vs. those with fire as heat source remained a hot topic in the decades to follow. In Dingler’s Polytechnisches Journal, a 1889 article lists a few experimental results. At Berlin’s Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei (VLB), the amount of fuel required to brew beer using steam was determined to be significantly less than using direct firing, certainly one good argument in favour of steam. In addition, Schloßbrauerei in Schöneberg conducted an experiment to directly compare lager beer brewed using fire with beer of the same type brewed using steam, and the differences were negligible, “contrary to the widespread prejudice that Dampfbier was less full-bodied”.

I could go one like this, but when looking at historic sources, one thing becomes very clear very quickly: Dampfbier in the 19th century purely referred to beer brewed using steam as a heat source, not barley beers fermented with Weißbier yeast.

Even when looking at more recent sources about Dampfbier, it becomes very clear that very few such beers ever existed. A few prominent examples that I was able to find were Maisel’s Dampfbier (Michael Jackson briefly mentioned it as an “ale-like specialty”), Dampfbier from 1. Dampfbierbrauerei Zwiesel (which also seems to be the source of the supposed origin story of the Dampfbier style), and Borbecker Helles Dampfbier, for which is not even clear whether this is actually a top-fermented beer using Weißbier yeast. Besides these three beers, there’s not much around.

So, what can be said to vindicate the beer style? Beer brewed from pale barley malt and fermented using Weißbier yeast definitely existed and is well-documented. Friedrich Meyer mentioned Weißbier brewed from pale barley malt, sometimes with the addition of small amounts of wheat malt in his books, e.g. 1830 Die bayerische Bierbrauerei. The 1847 edition of this book even makes a distinction between weißes Gerstenbier (white barley beer) and weißes Weitzenbier (white wheat beer), but also explains that the term Weißbiercommonly refers to the former.

So, in that sense, the beer style that some people nowadays call Dampfbier definitely existed. It just used to be called Weißbier (white beer), and has nothing to do with the historic understanding of Dampfbier as a beer brewed using steam. Personally, I’m just unhappy with the term as it is confusing, it gives credence to the too-good-to-be-true origin story, and it hides the much more complex history of white beers in Bavaria.
I've been to the brewery in Zwiesel. They just use a standard top-fermenting yeast, not a wheat beer one. The beer tastes like a lightly-hopped Alt.
 
So little update on this adventure. Bottled the beer today, I know lame who still bottles lol. The color is a tad darker than I expected it to be. The aroma is good a little sweet. Taste well warm and mixed with the priming sugar was hard to get a good taste but nothing harsh or off. So now to wait a few weeks and see how it turns out.
 
So little update on this adventure. Bottled the beer today, I know lame who still bottles lol. The color is a tad darker than I expected it to be. The aroma is good a little sweet. Taste well warm and mixed with the priming sugar was hard to get a good taste but nothing harsh or off. So now to wait a few weeks and see how it turns out.
 
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