Dunkelweizenguy: A Hopped, Dark Wheat Christmas, and A Centennial Weizenguy

With Christmas a few weeks out, and based on inventory, I went for two batches of something a little unconventional, like Abby Hoffman at a prayer breakfast.

I started with several grains and malt mixtures, as well as several hop options, including little bags of Nugget, Hallertau, Szaas, Palicade, Citra, Centennial and Chanook, and went looking for a recipes to fit the bill.

For the first batch, the closest thing I could find in the BeerSmith software database was Dunkelweizen, but I decided to make it with way more hops than any recipe I could find.  So that's right-- I'm going straight for that "muddy blend of hops and malt", as one home brewer put it.

  According to BeerSmith software, Dunkelweizen was a popular beer style in Europe up to the 1950s, when it began to be associated with older beer drinkers, who emphasized it's health benefits to the deaf ears of the youth.  And so the market disfavored it, and commercial brewers stopped making it.

Starting with 2 lbs of caramel wheat grain, 5 lbs of Munich liquid malt, 2lbs of Northern Brewing's Wheat liquid malt, 1lb of dry malt extract and a half lb of honey, and half pound of dextrose, I heated grains in the 149 degree range for 30 minutes in the hopes of getting liquid from lautering the roasted wheat that's neither overly dry form lower temperatures, or sweet from temperatures in the 155 range.

After lautering, I ramped up the heat to boiling for 70 minutes, adding greater amounts of bittering hops (Nugget, Chinook, Palicade and Hallertau) every 10 minutes or so until the last 15 minutes, when I added aromatic hops (Citra and Palicade).

I ended the boil when the very bready aroma was greatly reduced, and at that point the gravity came to 14 Brix by spectrometer, or over .50 on the hydrometer.

The morning after I added Nottingham yeast at 85 degrees, which took a day to go ass wild, and it kept bubbling through the airlock for 4 days hence.

This second batch was brewed at a friend's house, was a similar radical departure from strict style guidelines, well outside the suggested hop additions and the collective words of wisdom on the home brewing message boards.

We chose a variety of malts, including Crystal 60L, Light Munich and a Rahr six row for base grains, as well as Northern Brewer's liquid Wheat malt extract.  The Rahr is used often in American wheat beers for it's high gravity, high protein qualities.  In addition, we used a pound of dry malt extract and corn sugar to give it an even higher ABV.   We were drinking Bell's Stout, as you can see here, which did not aid our detail orientation at a certain point, along with the protracted chit chatting.

Then we chose just two hops, the noble Saaz and Kenny and Zimmerman's epic and popular 90's variety, Centennial to give the Wheat beer mad, citrus flavor, however unconventional.

The Wheat beer promises a lighter color, a more diverse malt character, with less hop variety to "muddy" the mixture as grouches have grumbled.  But Centennial is no slouch in the bittering or aroma department, which makes it very popular at the IPA arms race going on among American craft brewers.

The hydrometer read well over 50 at the start, as the spectrometer topped out at 17 brix, which should bring this puppy juice in at and astonishing 9.50% ABV.   That testimony to drinking a little less beer while committing to brewing, at least the part where you keep adding malts.

We may have had a bit of a heavy hand in that department, but it was all in good fun.

We used 6 pounds of grain here, in contrast to the Dunkelweizenguy I made first.   Maybe this is just the "Weizenguy" to my "Dunkelweizenguy".

Stay tuned for our result around Christmas week.