Dunkel Bock

[CrealCritter]

Up next is my take on a Dunkel Bock. Dunkel in German means Dark, so it'll be a Dark Bock for us Americans..

Bock's are very simple by following the German purity law. Where beer must contain only 4 ingredients, barley, water, hops & yeast. Germans take their beer very seriously. The ingredients of what goes into a German beer is governed by law.

Ingredients: (5 gallon batch)
6 lbs Munich dry malt extract
1 lb Pillsen Light dry malt extract
1/2 Lb Chocolate Malt
1/2 oz Hallertauer hops
1 package Saflager 34/70
6 gallons water.

This Dunkel Bock should have a malty Munich sweet forground taste that finishes with a just a hint of chocolate toffee flavor. It will be very low in bitterness to allow the malty sweetness to shine though. That's the plan anyways... I'll work on the label later.

Plan is to brew this Saturday Dec 28.

 

[flowerbug]

lookin' good to me too! any chance you could put a pipeline in from here to there? haha. just a tiny one.

i'd like to lift a glass tonight to the progressive rock drummer Neil Peart of Rush who passed away a few days ago. i just heard about it today. cheers, you will be missed Neil!

 

[CrealCritter]

Add a gallon of spring water to a 3 gallon kettle. Put the crushed Chocolate Malt in a muslin bag and tie a loose knot in the end. Begin to heat the water to 155 degrees

Maintain as close as you can to 155 degrees for 30 minutes (150 to 160 is good).

Start your kettle with 3 gallons of spring water and stir in 6 lbs of Munich and 1 lb of pilsen light dried malt extract.

Stir the kettle often to avoid scorched malt to the bottom of the kettle. Take a little taste of the malts oh how sticky sweet they are.

At the end of 30 minutes cut off the flame under the chocolate malt (if it's on) and suspend the muslin bag of chocolate malt above the smaller kettle. Allow it to drop back into the kettle. Pour 1 gallon of room temperature spring water through the muslin bag and also allow to drop back into the kettle. Squeeze the bag like you bought it to get every last drop of chocolate malt into the kettle.

Chickens love me

Now pour the chocolate malt wort into the large kettle of Munich and Pilsen. You will now have approximately 5 gallons of Dark Bock wort to heat to boil.

Once boiling starts (stir often) add 1/2 ounce of hops in a small muslin bag and set your timer for a 60 minute boil. Stir often all the way to the bottom to avoid scorched wort. Kick back and relax, enjoy the smell of the wort boiling and man it's so sticky delicious sweet.

At 50 minutes into the boil (with 10 minutes left) add the clean emersion chiller to sterlize it. At 60 minutes or flame out hook up the chiller to the sink and start cold water flowing through it. You'll want to contine to chill the wort into the mid 60's. Close enough...

next pour your wort, into a clean and sanitized 6 1/2 gallon food grade bucket. Fish out the hop muslin bag, with a clean and sterile extra long handled mash paddle, rinse the muslin bag with ice cold spring water and squeeze it against the side of the bucket with the paddle, so it drips back into the bucket, then disregard. Also rinse the kettle with ice cold spring water and dump that back into the bucket. Top the bucket off to 5 gallons (you loose a good gallon to boiling). Add quart of Saflager 34/70 yeast starter and mix well. Cover and add the air lock.

There's nothing to do now but wait and clean up . One good thing about brewing a dark beer, every little spot shows up easy.

Starting gravity 1.062, this beer should ferment out to about 6%ish ABV

 

[CrealCritter]

After diacetyl rest, it finished fermenting @ 1.014 which puts it @ 6.30% alochol by volume on the nose. It tastes great, almost but not quite like a S'more. It's missing smoke and not near as sweet because most of but not all of the sweetness is offset by the bittering hops addition. But it does taste a lot like a S'more. Gramcracker, marshmallow and chocolate is the first thing that came to mind when I tasted it. It's very well balanced and smooth for green beer - Yum. It will be interesting to see how it finishes after lagering and carnbonates, but right now this Dunkel Bock recipe is a definite keeper.

 

[CrealCritter]

lookin' good to me too! any chance you could put a pipeline in from here to there? haha. just a tiny one.

i'd like to lift a glass tonight to the progressive rock drummer Neil Peart of Rush who passed away a few days ago. i just heard about it today. cheers, you will be missed Neil!

Neil Peart hemispheres album, I swear you could set a nuclear clock to his timing. The best modern day percussionist, I don't think anyone even comes close. RIP Neal

 

[flowerbug]

Neil Peart hemispheres album, I swear you could set a nuclear clock to his timing. The best modern day percussionist, I don't think anyone even comes close. RIP Neal

i've got 'em all and play through them all once every few months. that album happens to be among the top 5 for me of their work. Caress of Steel too. i do like all of their albums (it took me a few playings of some of them to figure it out but eventually they were accepted into my head) and even watch the live concerts i can find on-line and am always amazed by what they could do and how they did it. 40+yrs. that's a heck of a run and they ran it well. the other two guys must be hurtin' my heart goes out to all of them and any other fans.

 

[CrealCritter]

with all the focus on sterility it might be a good idea to mention that squeezing could be done with food handling gloves or some other sterile instrument as for sure when i hear someone say squeeze i assume you are speaking of squeezing with the hands. which are massively laden with bacteria of many kinds... not that the alcohol won't kill them (after all that's predominantly what ales and beers were for back then), but after all that emphasis on sterile it just stuck out to me as something to mention.

Poor choice of words on my behalf... I used One Step for making this batch, for cleaning l. Then followed up by Star San to sanitize everything that comes into contact with the wort once it's chilled, including my hands. I'll go back and edit my post to be more clear.

But you are 100% correct, cleanliness and sanitation is the top priority, when it comes to beer and wine making.

I also might add... One Step is great for, mopping the floor and cleaning counters before you start the brew. It's also great for cleaning up after your done.

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

with all the focus on sterility it might be a good idea to mention that squeezing could be done with food handling gloves or some other sterile instrument as for sure when i hear someone say squeeze i assume you are speaking of squeezing with the hands. which are massively laden with bacteria of many kinds... not that the alcohol won't kill them (after all that's predominantly what ales and beers were for back then), but after all that emphasis on sterile it just stuck out to me as something to mention.

Most styles of beer have a signature characteristic or two that dominate their profile may it be machine or hand squeezed. If it’s the pure, unobstructed, lugubrious essence of malt you seek nothing beats manual labour, traditional bock beer presents unfettered maltiness to the palate like no other style of brew.

 

[CrealCritter]

After 3 weeks of lagering @ 33 ~ 35 degrees. I pulled the Dunkel Bock and put it in the kezzer under 10 PSI of CO2 gas at 35 degrees. It should be carbonated in about a week. However I did sample a little, it's changed nicely while lagering. Most definitely Dunkel (dark).

Link to slow (7 ~10 days) forced carbonation chart ---> https://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table/

 

[CrealCritter]

Still a little under carbonated but my daughter in law liked the sample I gave her. She said "smooth sweet chocolate beer and just a hint of hop smell". It goes down smooth and easy without any bitter finish. It could use a little better mouthfeel. it's a little thin for my liking but that might come about with more carbonation.