Yes, I know this has been beaten to death here.
But let’s beat it up some more!
Potential grain bill (5.5 gallon) for the dark lager:
Munich (6 lbs)
Vienna (6 lbs)
Caramunich I (1 lb)
Carafa II (1 lb)
All Weyermann.
Will this make what we are looking for, a nice dark (not black) intense ruby-red colored lager? Medium full body, with a smooth malt forward profile.
Saaz hops will be employed, as will a fresh slurry of Czech Pils Yeast.
Any ideas / suggestions?
It might be BrewBama that has an excellent looking recipe. I will see if I can dig it up…
EDIT: Found it.
I really enjoyed this Dark Czech Lager. It is based on a recipe from another homebrewer Paulaner which is based on Pivovar Kout na Šumavě Koutský tmavý speciál 14°.
I used
77% Pils
10% Munich
10% Caramunich II
3% Carafa II
22 IBU Saaz at 60 min
13 IBU Saaz at 30 min
Bohemian Lager Yeast (I had to sub my preferred yeast to S-189 because my Homebrew shop was out of Bohemian Lager Yeast. Paulaner used 2278.)
Thank you! This looks good.
How about these grains…Carabohemian and Carared?
The best one I made had Weyermann Bohemian Pils, Dark Munich, Carabohemian, and some dehusked Carafa II. Saaz Hops, WLP 800. It was a 10P beer, tasty.
Weyermann makes a Bohemian dark malt, would use that in place of the Munich Dark next time. Anyone have luck finding Bohemian Dark?
If you want a bigger version search for U Fleku. Gordon Strong has a recipe for a copy of that in his last book. Should be around 13P or so.
I had a sack of Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Dark about 3 years ago and the Czech Dark I made with it did pretty well in competitions. I haven’t seen it around since, though. Probably a special order for most LHBS’s when it is available. I love this style.
[emoji106]
I made one that I really liked and have wanted to recreate. It was with Best Pils, Weyermann Floor-Malted Bohemian Dark malt, carabohemian, and Carafa special II. Hops were saaz and yeast was S-189.
That sounds about what I used, but I used Caramunich instead of Carabohemian. All the rest was pretty identical, though - I need to go back in my records and look for that one. Cheers!
Bob Hall and Randy Scorby presented on Czech Lagers in 2015. There’s a DCL recipe in this link:
My local shop did not have quite what we wanted, but we are close.
This will be for an 8.5 gallon batch. 11.5 gallon boil. It will be split in two kegs after fermentation is complete.
All Weyermann
8 lbs Vienna
8 lbs Dark Munich
2 lbs Caramunich II
2 lbs Carabohemian
1 lb Carared
We wanted something with a higher OG in hopes of hitting 6.0+ ABV.
What should the target IBU’s be? 25? 30?
The total grain bill is a bit greater than what many would use, simply because we mill our grain on the course side, so we do not have the extract efficiency that most of you have.
Star Date Log Brew Date: 3/20/20
That’s a lot of crystal malt. Looks closer to a dunkel to me
The 10P I have made a couple of times uses 15% Carabohemian. The U Fleku recipe Modern Homebrew Recipes by Gordon Strong has just over 15% Cara.
I would agree that ~24% is a little high.
The Dunkels I’m familiar with are mostly Dark Munich, a touch of Carafa for color, maybe 5% or less of CaraMunich and/or Mellanoidin malt.
Myron, brew this as you wish, give us some feedback please.
24% crystal malt is too much for any beer but that’s just my opinion which I realize doesn’t hold much weight. I would expect mostly pils as the base. Maybe push the ibus up around 35 to cut through the malt?
I’m sure it will make amazing beer. Disregard. Brew on
We will brew tomorrow. So the crystal can be reduced a bit. The basic recipe is not far off from a Dunkel recipe found on BYO.
How about we cut the CaraBohemian and CaraMunich by 50%?
What would you recommend? I am all ears!
Honestly I would brew something like the brewbama recipe. It seems like you have something else mind so I would just move forward.
Like this?
13 lbs Pils
4 lbs Munich
3 lbs CaraMunich
1 lb Carafa II
The above is from the link provided by BrewBama.
The intent is to brew something our wife’s will like. They drink Guinness. And they like it. We don’t want to make a stout, but a dark lager. Rich, full bodied, with good malt forward character, balanced by hops. It is not really intended to be a BJCP profile beer.
Again, suggestions and/or comments are appreciated!
I like to hang out at ~5% Crystal/Caramel/Cara myself.
I could never get over Pete’s Wicked Ale that came in at ~17% C60 but they do cut it with ~4% choc.
“Rich, full bodied, with good malt forward character, balanced by hops” is not exactly how I would go about designing a beer that Guinness lovers might like. 
I kid.
Sort of.
And I agree with the above posters, that’s a lot of crystal but if you are going for full-bodied…
Still, I think you could get away with half that and still meet your goals.
Good luck!
Take a look at this thread on Beer Advocate. Hard to go wrong with input from Evan Rail:
The CaraBohemian has been eliminated…don’t like the flavor of the grains!
CaraMunich is now 1 lb.
We will still use the Carared - 1/2 lb.