I really like a lot of the German lagers, and though I do have a fermentation chamber I’d prefer to try an ale version that will be lagered. This is one of those times I don’t care about being within specs as long as it turns out fairly similar.
I noticed the online retailer I use carried Briess Bonlander Munich grains. Does this need the more typical 90 min boil to drive off DMS? According to Briess it can be used as 100% of the grain bill, but I intend on mixing it with Munich LME.
Toying around with a calculator last night I came up with this as a 5.5 gal partial mash/partial boil (~0.875 gal top off including LME):
I added the 2-row just to bump the gravity up in case I have efficiency issues. They aren’t common but they have happened.
I figured a typical 3 week fermentation followed by 3 weeks conditioning, and then 4 weeks lagering. Would this possibly result in something similar enough to a Dunkel?
If you want something that tastes like a dunkel, try to make the recipe as dunkel-like as possible. That means you don’t need any of those grains except for the munich, and maybe a tiny bit of dark malt for color. It the gravity comes out low, add some more munich extract to adjust. Bitter with noble hops, and if you use a late hop addition it absolutely should be with a noble hop.
The US-05 is a good choice for a lager-like ale yeast, and you schedule looks good as well. Ferment as cool as you can manage - 60 would be perfect for this yeast.
Agree with RC but I’d use Wy1007 German Ale yeast. I fermented a Moctoberfest with 1007 at 58 degrees, same grain bill as my Ofest and had them on tap at the same time. Some people couldn’t tell them apart.
The recipe I came up with (minus the LME and 2-row) were somewhat similar to one I found, though it used C 120 instead. And looking at BJCP guidelines it sounded like these fit in. Does it not? Initially I had a little midnight wheat for color but took it out seeing that chocolate was used. What would you use to sub?
I add something for head retention as I often suffer from problems. It was between that and flaked barley I figured…
Right now I am just using dry yeasts. It seemed US-05 was about as good as I can get.
