Homebrew Recipe: The Dunkel (Extract)

Once upon a time, shortly after I became a confident brewer, I had the dream that I was going to
revolutionize the beer world by inventing or pioneering a new style. In my pursuit, I thought to myself,
“what about a dark wheat beer, surely that’s never been done before!” Well, I emailed this to Hacksaw
Brewing, excited to share my genius. And then I remembered, ye olde dunkelweizen is a dark wheat
beer and has been around for quite some time. You win some, you lose some I suppose. Nevertheless,
I decided to take my realization and brew it up.

Recipe

Grain Bill

6.6 lb Wheat LME 

1 lb Crystal 40L 

0.25 lb Chocolate Malt 

0.25 lb Roasted Barley 

Hop Schedule

(60) 1 oz German Hallertau 

(20) 0.5 oz US Tettnang 

(5) 0.5 oz US Tettnang 

Yeast: White Labs WLP320 American Hefeweizen 

Boil Volume: 3 Gallons 

Fermentor Volume: 5 Gallons 

OG – Oops 

FG – I’m 

ABV – A slacker… 

Procedure: Steeped grains at 165 for 30 minutes. Added LME and brought wort to boil. Added hops,
cooled using ice bath, transferred to fermentor, pitched yeast.

Fermentation/Packaging: Fermented for 10 days in primary at about 68F. Transferred to keg and force
carbonated.

Tasting Notes: I have minimal tasting notes from The Dunkel, but since it was one of the first beers I
kegged, I do have a pretty good memory of it. It had a light brown color with an off white head. It had a
lot of sweet caramel and toffee flavors and a lighter, smoother mouthfeel than most brown ales or
stouts.  Some of the clove/banana notes from the hefeweizen yeast shone through as well.

Improvements/Tweaks: I’d be interested in potentially dialing up the flavoring hops and maybe the
bittering hops just a little to cut a little bit of the sweetness. But overall it was a good example of the style, and quite a nice beer!