After 20 years working for a restaurant concept commonly made fun of in that movie, that movie makes me grin every time also. Especially since I no longer work for that concept or any restaurant! So happy to have a “normal” schedule
Well, Jamil and John call for 5 pounds of Pilsener malt, 4 pounds of Munich malt, and 3 pounds of Vienna malt, along with a pound of Caramunich…so I vote for the Munich. I use it a lot in my lagers. Nice flavor profile.
Did you wear the proper amount of flair?
I just sent my Octoberfest/Fest beer to a competition and I used Pils, Munich, Vienna, and Caramunich. I’ll let you know if I get slammed for the caramel malt. It seems to me that many american interpretations have a caramel malt flavor in them. Mine didn’t come accross as having too much caramel maltiness (to my tastes), but rather a bit of a nuttiness.
I have no problem using whatever amount of cara/crystal is appropriate to accomplish my purposes. But in that beer,it just isn’t necessary.
Yeah, a few times, both as ale and lager. I perceive Vienna as having a very dry taste.
Nope, no flair at all for me. I was the one making sure the staff was wearing enough flair. It became really difficult to have that conversation after the movie came out.
I made one once. I found it to be rather bland. Slightly sweet, not a lot of malt or toasted flavor. I like it better mixed with pilsner malt.
I am thinking Munich is a possibility too.
I regularly use a Pils/Vienna/Munich mix in “fest” type beers (generally 50-60% on the pils, and split the other two up in different ways depending on what I am looking for).
I also try to go with some “dark munich” in the mix. I try to use as little caramel/caramunich as I can.
My first attempt at an oktoberfest is currently in the fermenter. If my memory serves correct it was roughly a 4:3:2 ratio of pils to munich to Vienna with the remaining 10% being split between dark munich and some crystal 40. The crystal malt may not be traditional or necessary but I am not too worried about it as long as the result is good.
What flavors do you guys get from Best Pils malt? I think it has quite a unique flavor in a helles. I haven’t quite been able to describe it.
I agree that it is hard to pick the right descriptor with BestMalz pils malt - perhaps “richly malt forward”? It is my favorite, but I haven’t had a sack of it for a while - I have been using Avengard lately, because my LHBS has it readily available by the sack and I like it well enough to use it instead of driving 45 minutes further to get a bigger selection that would include BestMalz. Free time is the key for me - I don’t seem to have enough of it!
The malt bill sounds like it will do well.
A bit of advice… take some notes on your yeast type and fermentation temps. I spent a couple years taking a recipe similar to what you have, and used different yeasts at different temps… I found that I could influence the Malt and hop flavors in the final beer a “suprising amount” just by changing yeast strains. (Mexican lager is my go-to for this style). In the end, if you are dialing in this style… from here I would keep fermentation the same and play with recipe… or keep the recipe the same and try a few yeasts.
Enjoy!
Richly maltly sounds right, but I can’t figure out any specific descriptor, like crackery, bready, etc.
I’d like to see if anyone else has experience with Best pils or heidelberg to be able to give it a good descriptor.
A descriptor came to mind last night while drinking my helles. Honey Graham. The beer isn’t sweet, it finished at 1.011, but it definitely has a honey graham like character. It’s very pleasant. Anyway, let’s keep discussing Marzen maltiness, didn’t mean to derail the thread…
Denny, a friend of mine also spaced on adding the caramunich to the BCS Oktoberfest. He’s all worried it’s going to suck. I keep telling him it should be awesome. He used good German malts, don’t know what he’s worried about.
Tell him it’s only beer!
This years Ofest used 50% Vienna, 30% Munich 6L, 4% Caramunich 2, and the balance pilsner malt. Just finished carbonating, I’m very happy with it. I too have ben toying with the idea of doing away with the Caramunich altogether in this beer. I agree that it’s not really necessary and I the long boil (90 minutes) gets it to the color I want without it. The Ofest that I get on tap at Prost is the Hofbrau Ofest and is a light golden color, but still has a nice malty character. I prefer the slight orange tint of the traditional beer.
I know, I try. He’s a bit of a worrier. I still think it’ll turn out fantastic and it’ll be interesting to see how it tastes with and without the caramunich since I’ve got the version with caramunich lagering/carbonating right now.
+1 Same here. Which made my last trip to the Hofbrauhaus in Newport KY somewhat disappointing. All the other beers I’ve had there have been very good to excellent. But I went there last fall specifically for the monthly seasonal - Oktoberfest (go figure). Except that it was evidently brewed more to suit what they perceived as American tastes, because it was overly sweet and caramunich-y, and much more amber than the bottled version which (fresh) is excellent. Pretty disappointing.
After Dave posted about this a while back, I brewed a Vienna Centennial SMASH last winter that was great. Most of it was consumed during maple syrup season, while cooking down sap. Good stuff!