I am planning to brew this dunkelweizen Saturday.
6 lbs Munton’s Wheat DME
.5 lb Chocolate Malt
1 oz Hallertau 60 min
.5 oz Hallertau 30 min
.5 oz Hallertau 15 min
Original recipe called for Wyeast Weihenstephen #3068 which my LHBS did not have so I substituted Wyeast Bavarian Wheat #3056? Are these comparable? Which would you prefer?
I’m not very familiar with wyeast, as I typically use white labs for liquid, but I love White labs bavarian weizen eyast for my dunkelweizen, so i would say you made a good choice in your substitution. I prefer more spicy/clove in my dunkelweizen and the white labs bavarian weizen yeast shows no sign of banana, which I like.
According to the Wyeast web site, 3056 is a blend of a ale and wheat strains, whereas 3068 is a single strain. I expect that 3056 will produce fewer esters and phenols than 3068, so you’ll get less in the way of bananas and cloves. I’d probably prefer 3068 for a hefe, but for a dunkel, you’ll probably get really good results from 3056.
Thanks for the replies. I thought they were comparable, but wasn’t sure of the differences. This is only my fourth brew and my first wheat beer, so I will take good notes and brew the next one with 3068 and see which one I like better.
A little critique of your recipe - what you have will make a nice beer, but traditionally these beers don’t have a lot of chocolate or roasted flavor. For a dunkleweiss you really want a blend of Munich and Wheat (or even dark wheat) and maybe a little huskless roasted malt - which does not impart as much roasted flavor tot he beer. The beer should be more about rich melanoidin malt character. I also like a little touch of cara-munich in mine. Also, usually these beers don’t have a lot of hop flavor (in fact, most have no hop flavor at all). For a more traditional dunkleweizen you would use a bittering addition only.
For this beer I prefer WL300 or WL380. A lot of people say the WLP300 is better for a dunkelweizen and I am starting to think I may believe this too. I am thinking for my taste I prefer less spiciness for this style, maybe a little more balanced toward the banana (which the WLP300 will give you.)
For a dunkelweizen I would pitch in the very low 60s and ferment in the mid to high 60s. Don’t ferment too warm or you will have too much banana and it could also affect your head retention too (even with all that wheat.)
Don’t let this critique discourage you from the beer you plan on brewing tomorrow, but perhaps keep it in mine for your next attempt.
I appreciate the critique as it will only help me brew better beer in the future.
I found the recipe somewhere online. I don’t recall where, but I thought it would be fairly simple for a newbie to attempt. I didn’t really give much thought to conforming exactly to style guidelines. Would you suggest just swapping Munich malt with the chocolate malt and only using 1.5 oz of hops at 60min?
I am doing a 3 gallon boil and steeping the grains.
I think the recipe will make a good beer as is, the only major change I would make is swapping out the chocolate with carafa special - but if you don’t have the carafa special don’t worry about it… Its going to be kinda hard to brew this beer extract because I doubt there a munich/wheat extract blend. You could do a Munich/wheat mini-mash if you wanted. but like I said, I don’t see thi making a bad beer anyway, and who knows - you may like these results better than a to-style example!
I would recommend going with a bittering only addition and keep the IBUs around 9-12. This beer isn’t about hops and only a slight lingering bitterness should play a roll.