Home Brew Forum

Munich Blauer Vogel

This is basically a Coniston Bluebird Bitter with 500g of Munich Malt (and about 80g too much Crystal as it seemed a shame to leave such a small bag full!) and a little extra hopping. I'm going to pitch a split Whitelabs Edinburgh Ale yeast

Fermentables:
Maris Otter 3600g
Munich Malt 500g
Crystal Malt 170g

Hops:
Boadicea 60 mins 27g (FWH)
Challenger 30 mins 30g
Challenger 20 mins 21g
Challenger 0 mins 10g

Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.042
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.6 Litres
Mash Liquor: 10.7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 48 EBU
Colour: 15 EBC

The Grain; Maris Otter, Munich Malt, Crystal Malt:

Mashing:

Mashed in a little high:

pH of Mash looks somewhere near:

Boiler warming Sparge water and Mash tucked up under a coat:

Hops and brew Sheet:


No sparging photos as its stuck like a B'stard again!! Not happy, even with more and larger saw cuts in the copper manifold (Using the Thermos coolbox), it might have to be net curtain time next brew.
I'm finding the grain bed is going really solid, could this be the problem, could it maybe be my stirring technique after adding the batch sparge water etc?

Boadicea and 5g Gypsom FWH:

Challenger 30 min Hops:

OG:1040 couple of points out, though it was 27 Deg C so that about right, and I collected a few litres more than I should have:

Action Shot:

Cold Break:

Aeration and hop debris catching:

Pitched yeast at 26C-ish which had half an hour or so with some Fresh cooled wort added to it after decanting the 'beer' off the top of the yeast split bottle.

Fingers crossed for an Úber-Bluebird

Lovely pics and a nice looking brew there!

Hopefully a good one bar the sticking mash!, its my first time using Munich Malt, I'm hoping it will compliment the Challenger hops

I think Munich is pretty nice with almost anything......one of these days I'm going to do an all-Munich brew and see how it turns out.

The Germans call an all Munich malt beer a Munich Dunkel, and it is one of my favorites. Acutally, I add just a little Carafa II for color adjustment but basicly the beer is all Munich malt. The last batch I made used both light and dark Munich malt in an attempt to increase the malt complexity (plus of course I did a double decoction to get the all important melonoidin action going). To me the stuff tastes a little like a chocolate milkshake or chocolate cake, good stuff.

Barley Water wrote:The Germans call an all Munich malt beer a Munich Dunkel, and it is one of my favorites. Acutally, I add just a little Carafa II for color adjustment but basicly the beer is all Munich malt. The last batch I made used both light and dark Munich malt in an attempt to increase the malt complexity (plus of course I did a double decoction to get the all important melonoidin action going). To me the stuff tastes a little like a chocolate milkshake or chocolate cake, good stuff.

Interesting.....what hop schedule/yeast/fermentation would you recommend?

Dunkles meaning dark....so I'd imagine a mainly malt based profile? I'll be in Munich in a few weeks, so I'll hunt some samples down and see if they are to my taste.

Fermentation started within 24 hours and is well underway as of this morning

Just taken a Hydro sample, its down to 1012 but still fizzing... lovely thick slimy yeast head

The Sample tasted bloody fantastic... Time will tell... Probably my best first-taste out of all my AG batches thus far
I could just drink it from the FV, its got all that lovely Challenger flavour (obviously), and nicely balanced.

Sorry it took me so long to answer there Adm. I am going off the top of my head since I am at work but this will be close:

The grist was basicly equal parts light Munich malt and dark Munich malt, a couple of ounces of Carafa II for color and some Melonoidin malt (I think about 4 ounces or so). You will get a pretty complex malty flavor with a grist like this, very nice wintertime brew. I was looking for an O.G. of about 1.055 so whatever it takes you to get that starting gravity with your set up. As per above, I did a double decoction and if I remember correctly, I boiled each one for 30 minutes. My go to lager yeast is Wyeast 2006 fermented at 50F (I bet there are several German lager yeasts that would do a good job). I think I did just one hop addition at 60 minutes (I always boil for 90 minutes) and I was targeting about 25 IBU with any German noble hop you have available (I used Hallertau if I remember correctly). I have moderately hard water here with both temporary and permanent hardness so I would adjust the hopping to your particular situation. I have done this one a couple of times now and it has done really well in competition (I finally won the dark lager category in out big contest last year so I have a soft spot in my heart for this beer).

The best part about brewing this beer (other than the consumption phase) is the way it makes the house smell when decocting, smells like somebody is baking a great big chocolate cake. I'll be doing this year's version within the month, I figure to do a least two lagers back to back with the same yeast (saves growing up the big starters required).