All Munich Barley Wine?

So Denny has been talking up Munich lately and it gave me an idea. First a little background

I recently brewed a partigyle Barleywine/small beer (bitter) using only pale ale malt that I ‘toasted’ in the over at 230f for 2 hours. Haven’t tasted the barley wine as it is not done primary yet (1.110 so it will be a while before that gets to a bottle). However I can only toast about 5 lbs at a time in my oven and for 1 gallon BW and ~4 gallons Small beer I used 10lbs. Not a big deal, just 2 sessions of toasting. But scale that up to 5 gallons BW and 7 gallons small and we are talking in the area of 32 lbs of grain. Not looking forward to 15 hours of toasting grain and unable to find an organic Mild malt(5-6L) I thought perhaps I would try light munich (10L) I know it will be a little darker but that is okay as long as it isn’t roasty. So what do y’all say?

35lbs Munich 10L

mashed at 148 for 90-120 min (1.2qt/lb)
First runnings into kettle to boil for ~120 min with 5 oz of belgian goldings for the whole boil

mash capped with 1 lb crystal 40 (for a little added body/sweetness in small beer) for 20 min
run off into second kettle for normal 60 minute boil with
.25 oz goldings at 60,
2 oz goldings @ 20
2 oz @ 15
2 oz @10
2 oz @ 5
2 oz @ 0
2 oz DH

I say it sounds good.  Be sure to mash for maximum fermentability.

+1

Cool. So for max fermentability I will go with 148 for 120 minutes?

Fyi, light munich is 4-8l while dark munich is 8-12l. This is from real German maltsters.

Ahh okay, well this will be great western munich which is listed at 10L. Trying to keep it as local as possible. Hard to find organic american grown goldings though. Guess I will just have to grow some.

i prefer to use the unreal german maltsters  ;)  seems like everyone has there own lovibond level for their light and dark munich.  i use them all depending on which beer style i’m making

Yea, no worries either way, just a tip.
cheers,
Bryan

I’m curious about that beer. Did it convert normally? Was efficiency typical? Attenuation?

To me Munich malt has a distinctive flavor. Even light. Not sure that I would call it roasty. More “malty”.

Well the small beer attenuated fine. From 1.034 to 1.008 in a week. Haven’t tested the BW because I put 1 gallon in a 5 gallon carboy and my theif doesn’t reach that far down.  ::). They both took off with less than 12 hours lag time and the BW showed krausen for about 1.5 weeks, it’s quietly sitting with just a few bubbles on top now coming up on three weeks so I might go ahead and transfer to a 1 gallon jug for secondary soon, although I might wait and reuse the yeast when I am ready for this next brew.

I did tests on a small .25lb scale first to make sure I wasn’t denaturing to many enzymes so I was fairly confident. Got a really nice deep red/brown color on the small beer although some of that is doubtlessly due to the carastan I capped the mash with.

Euge, This is exactly what I am after, a more malty flavour. I feel that is the defining characteristic of barley wine and what allows it to age so beutifully. Even after 5 oz of bittering hops it will still taste malty full bodied.

GW Munich is a great choice IMO.  I actually prefer it to continental Munich for Am. style beers.

I think it could be said GW is  great in general, its my stocked American 2row as well.

I agree.  GW and Rahr are my go to domestic malts.

That’s good to know. Assuming the barley used by GW is grown reasonably close to the malt house it’s only about 500-600 miles travel distance to me. closer by far than any other source.

At least until I get my barley patch planted… and harvested… and malted.

This reminds me of the mustard obsession article from the Onion that someone posted in the Pub awhile back.  :wink:

Yeah well, Perhaps I am a little obessed. But come on, growing your own beer from the dirt to the drink just sounds so cool.

Well, the all munich barley wine is in the fridge with a wYeast 1049 cake from the 5 gallon starter I made last weekend and it is spewing it’s guts all over the inside of my fridge ;D

Pitched around 11:00 PM on saturday and it had a nice 6 inches or krasuen by morning. Checked it last night about 24 hours in and the airlock was filled with crap and the floor of the fridge was covered in beer. I removed the airlock to clean it out and got a face full of krausen and hop pellet detritus. mmm.

Checked again 1 hours later and the airlock was once again clogged so i replaced it with some sanitized foil and will deal with cleaning up the mess when I get home tonight.

you know you always ‘KNOW’ about the exothermic reaction but I also have a 5 gallon pail of basil ale in the fridge, both have stick on thermometers and the basil is steady at 58-60 while the BW is cruisin at 66-68. so there it is, 8 degrees spread between a vigourus big beer and a slow to start small beer (only pitched 1 vial of white labs 002 in the basil as it is only around 1.040 and the yeast was very fresh (mr malty said it was okay).

EDIT that would be Wyeast 1098 excuse me