If I gave you a beer recipe with only the grain percentages and hops, could you figure out which yeast to use and which beer style it would make?
That’s the challenge set to me by Jesse from Yeast and The Beast. He sent me these ingredients. It’s my job to finish the recipe, name the beer style, and brew it up. I’m going to be sending my beer to Jesse to see how I did.
And spoiler alert, I’m going to make a fundamentally dumb mistake along the way.
Okay, so this is the grain, enough to make a free gallon batch using the percentages that I’ve been sent. And let’s figure out what beer to brew. And as we do that, I thought I’d be interesting to talk about timing today.
And the first thing we’ll talk about is how long it takes to get my water to strike temperature. I have a Clawhammer 240 volt system here, and currently my water temperature is 67 Fahrenheit. I want to get it to 150 Fahrenheit. So see how long that takes? Looks like it’s about done.
That will actually overshoot by a few degrees, which is great because that’ll get into the strike temperature I want. And then it will maintain whatever temperature I set. And this took, wow, 10 minutes, not bad. So much better at a 240 system than a 120, I just don’t have the patience.
Okay, let’s get the grains in. Looking nice. Okay, for the mash time, I’m going to mash for 40 minutes at 150 and see how that does, and then do a quick mash out. So let’s start the timer again.
So what beer style am I going to make?
Well, looking at the malt build, there’s clearly a lot of German ingredients here. Munich Malt, German Pilsner, and Carafa III, they’re all German as are Hallertauer Mittelfrüh hops.
So I’m going out on a limb here and calling this a German beer. To me, this looks a lot like a Munich Dunkel.
A Dunkel in German means dark, and while this beer will not be mistaken for a stout, it will have an SRM around 21. The flavor profile should be a combination of chocolate roasted malt and biscuit like. And that biscuit likeness will come from the Munich malt.
And I have brewed one of these way back, so far back in fact that I was using a different brewing system. That time I used Vienna and Carafa II two along with Munich malt. It’ll be interesting to taste the difference. All right, let’s check in on the mash.
After 40 minutes, I took a gravity reading and I was at around 1.041. That’s actually in line with what BeerSmith said I should be expecting. I then proceeded to a mash out at 168 Fahrenheit for another 10 minutes, took another reading and got 1.043.
I’m never really sure if I need to do a mash out with this system. And in this case, apparently I really didn’t. That didn’t add an awful lot to the gravity.
Okay, I am now bringing to boil, I didn’t start a timer for this, but to go from 168 mash out to boil, I mean, it’s just three, four minutes, it does not take long at all.
So as for hop, yes, Hallertauer Mittelfrüher going in twice, adding in Hallertauer Mittelfrüher at the start of the boil. And then with five minutes to go, the boil has started, so let’s add this one in.
Oh my goodness, I have completely screwed this up. So I’m just looking in BeerSmith at my recipe. And remember this Munich Dunkel is primarily Munich malt, basically two-thirds Munich and one-third Pilsner.
Well, I put the recipe into BeerSmith and I transposed it. I put 27% of Munich malt and 69% of German Pilsner. That’s completely the wrong way around. And this is the recipe that I sent into Atlantic Brew Supply and these are the grains that they’ve given me.
I don’t have enough Munich in my Munich Dunkel! I think I’m just not going to mention it and see if he notices.
I’ve chilled the water down to 19 Celsius. And this is the yeast that I’m going to be using. So this is Wyeast 2206 Bavarian lager yeast. Yes, lager yeast. A Munich Dunkel is a lager, so 20 Celsius is not going to cut it.
I’m going to chill this all the way down to 12 Celsius using my glycol setup before I actually add this yeast in. In terms of the original gravity of this beer, that came in at 1.050. And this being a lager, I will let this condition for a little while before sending it out for tasting.
Munich Dunkel doesn’t seem appropriate, does it? Pilsner Dunkel I think I should call this. There’s really no coming back from an ingredients error like this.
I am so eager to see how this plays out. Did the beer arrive okay?
Jesse:
Well, the cans definitely arrived fine. And I see that you wrote what was on there and crossed it out.
Martin:
It’s redacted, yeah. I wrote it on all the cans, so I could remember what it was. And I was just about to send it to you. I was like, “Oh, hold it on. That’s going to give the game away.” Well, let’s pour these beers before we say anything about them and see if it’s fizzy.
Jesse:
Which nice cans, by the way.
Martin:
Yeah, they’re really cool. Twisty cans.
Jesse:
Ooh, this one smells like it’s supposed to. Ooh, and it’s very clear, I think you were able to lager this one here for quite some time. My goodness, that is nice and dark. My goodness, I think you got me on this one, Martin. What do you think you brewed?
Martin:
Well, what I attempted to brew, and there’s a story behind this and I’ll get to that in a second. But what I attempted to brew was a Munich Dunkel.
Jesse:
That’s right. You got me.
Martin:
Yes. Yes.
Jesse:
I was hoping that the mixture of Pilsen to Munich malt was going to throw you off.
Martin:
Ah well, it did, but I don’t want to say anything about that until at least we’ve both tried the beer.
Jesse:
Okay.
Martin:
So yeah, let’s give it a taste.
Jesse:
Definitely. Cheers, yes. Oh, that smell, that is delicious. Oh my goodness. So I don’t know, but I haven’t put out a Munich Dunkel video on my channel. It’s because I’ve been perfecting this recipe. I’ve brew it probably like eight times and I’ve made the adjustments and I think I finally knocked it out of the park with this recipe, Martin.
And you brewing it and me tasting it right now, it is so good, and it is my recipe. And I thank you for doing this justice and it tastes fantastic.
Martin:
So here’s the thing, it’s not your recipe.
Jesse:
No.
Martin:
I made a monumentally stupid mistake. I transposed the Pilsen malt with the Munich malt. So this actually consists of 69% Pilsen malt and 27.5% Munich malt.
Jesse:
Call me Pinky, call me silly, because this is still a very good representation. And I’m still going to say this, it still tastes like my recipe, but the Munich is a little bit muted. But at the same time, it’s still a very good representation of that style, I do believe.
And I was stationed in Germany for three years, and this is a beer that I would drink all the time. I would buy a rack of this beer in Germany. And this is how they would make it in Germany to where the Munich malt isn’t the star. I think I might try to add more Pilsner, or Pilsen malt, because this is actually really good. And foot in mouth we’re saying that this is a good representation of my recipe.
Martin:
Inspired by your recipe.
Jesse:
Yeah.
Martin:
And interpreted by somebody who needs to proofread their emails.
Jesse:
Good job, man. Fantastic beer.
Martin:
Yeah, thank you for the recipe. Even though I screwed it up, I mean the, I love it, delicious. I’m so pleased that you picked a German lager. This has been hugely fun. And I have done the opposite with you, right?
So you and I, you sent me a recipe and I brewed it and had to guess it. I’ve done the same for you. I gave you a recipe, you’ve brewed it. And if you want to see that video and you absolutely should, then head on over to the Yeast and the Beast Channel right here and check that video out.
Lead marketer, brewer, dad, and husband. Pretty much an all-round awesome guy.