My Dunkles Weissbier Recipe

Gazint

Good day all.
This is my first time creating a recipe and need some advice.
I'm going for a Dunkles Weissbier style.
I've read from (Make Your Best Dunkelweizen) that "one half of your base malts should be wheat, and the other half Munich malt. For a five-gallon (19 l) batch, five pounds (2.25bkg) of each."
What I want to know is, can I use Pale Ale Malt in place of Munich malt and still be true to the beer style?
Following is the recipe I've created for a 5 gallon batch.
6 lbs Briess Pale Ale Malt
5.5 lbs Briess White Wheat Malt
1 lb Flaked Wheat
.5 lb Warminster Crystal Malt 60L
.25 lb Weyermann De-Husked Carafa II
Mash 18.2 Qts water that has a Chloride/Sulfate ratio of 1.02 at 150 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes.
Boil for 90 min with the following hops schedule:
.41 Oz Kent Golding pellet hops 5.6% AA for 90 min.
.25 Oz Cascade pellet hops 7.2% AA for 15 min.
.25 Oz Kent Golding pellet hops 5.6% AA for 15 min.
.25 Oz German Hallertauer pellet hops 3.6% AA for 5 min.
This should produce a beer that has an O.G of 1.055 and an SRM of 14.2
For the yeast I'm using Safale S-04 Dry Ale Yeast, fermented at 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
Thanks in advance for your advice and replies.

khannon

I'm guessing you are going to lose a bit of the malty flavor in switching to the pale ale malt but probably get pretty close.
I would question the yeast choice though. Can you get your hands on something like WB-06? I just used Mangrove Jack M20 and the dunkelweiss came out awesome. I don't have much experience with any of the other liquid yeasts. You want a yeast that will express some of the banana and clove aspects, and adjust your fermentation temps to get the beer to your liking. S-04 is going to drop out of suspension pretty quickly, and this style of beer should have some level of yeast kicking around.
Also, boiling the hops for 90 minutes may lead to more bitterness than you intend. Typically when I do a 90 minute boil, I'll add the primary bittering charge at 60 minutes left. The cascade hops seem a little out of place, though it's not much and towards the end. All of this is subject to your taste though.

Miraculix

Wb06 is one of the worst choices for a German wheat beer. It's actually a Belgian witt/saison strain which is labelled horribly wrong by its manufacturer. S04 is an English ale yeast and also not a good choice.
Lallemand Munich classic is often referred to as the best dry choice.
Cascade is not a good choice as well, any noble hop should do.

khannon

Good to know. I had never used it, just figured that wherever the S-04 was from might also carry others from the same vendor, and was going by the web description.

Kickass

You’ll have beer but as others have pointed out, it won’t be a dunkle weiss.
Briess is not the best choice of malt. It’s rather bland, IMO.
Hops should be noble German variety. Scrap the English and American hops.
And the big one: you MUST use the appropriate yeast for this style. You can cheat a little here or there but not when it comes to yeast.

z-bob

I started another thread before I found this one, where I mentioned using WB-06 in a dunkelweizen and someone said it was a poor choice but didn't say why. So, it's actually a witbier yeast? That's good information although I'm not sure exactly what it means. If you brew a witbier without adding coriander and orange, what do you get, just a cloudy beer without much flavor? Or do you still get clove and banana, they are just muted?
I may order a packet of WB06 anyway for something else (I don't know what), but maybe I ought to use Munich Classic for this one. I'm just a little hesitant to use Lallemand dry yeast because all my dumpers have been with that brand. (it's only 2 batches so probably way too small a sample to be meaningful, but still it gives me pause)

AlexKay

Belgian yeasts generally give peppery phenols and esters are … maybe more berry than banana?
FWIW, I’ve had some sub-par experiences with Fermentis (esp S04 and K97), and Lallemand yeast (Nottingham, London, Koln) has done very well for me. Well, they say opinions are like …
To the OP: you’ll really miss the Munich if you swap in pale malt. Is there a reason to go that way? Other good malts that you can play with for a dunkelweizen (to substitute for some or all of the Carafa and caramel): chocolate rye, midnight wheat, Briess Extra Special, and Simpsons DRC.