Darkening Beers Through Extended Boiling

They would be on Weiss production, but not the others.

Sure, I get it.

 

This is the "Scottish hack" while its fine, and whatever, IMO It won't be what you're after.

 

No. Design your recipe to hit your OG. Stop the lauter 1/4 of a gallon short of what is needed at pre-boil. When you add back the reduced wort you’ll hit the correct pre-boil volume. The only major risk is that the reduced wort will be more concentrated, therefore your pre-boil gravity may be a little high. But I ended up with a batch OG that was almost right on the mark. So it was never a factor.

I boiled the gallon on a second burner while I continued to collect the rest of the wort in my kettle on the first burner (but the burner was not on). The timing is tricky and I didn’t do it perfectly. It took longer than I thought to reduce the gallon to 1/4 of a gallon. I lautered for 30 minutes and then had to wait to start boiling because the first gallon wasn’t finished being reduced. I would have been closer if I would have conducted a 60 minute lauter. It took every bit of this and probably more to reduce the gallon. I didn’t start the boil in the main kettle until I added back the reduced wort because I always take a pre-boil volume and gravity measurement. I like to do this before I turn on the heat.

The beer is fermenting right now so I don’t have any tasting notes on the final product to share with you yet.

Good luck.

 

I don’t know what a “hack” is, but the process was recently described in Brew Your Own magazine for darkening a wee heavy (a Scottish Ale). The author of the article (Gordon Strong) says that Michael Jackson described this process as a way that Traquair House created caramelizing flavors. The difference is that they used extended full wort boils of 3 hours.

 

Pehaps you have mentioned this somewhere before, but what is a typical mash schedue used by German brewers of a German Pils or Munich Helles? Thanks!

 

They use HochKurz.
2 rests with a mashout. 20-30 usually per rest. Temps are based on the malt analysis, which is how mashes work. Beers are mashed based on the MA and not a beer "style", this is a common misconception homebrewers make.

 

A brewery in the Detroit area makes a dark strong beer full of flavor. When I asked them they said it is just pale malt with a 5 hour boil. The beer is 4D from Kuhnhenn.

 

Jeff, do you happen to know what type of brew kettle Kuhnhenn has (e.g., copper vs. stainless steel)?

When I took my tour of Pilsner Urquell last month they 'emphasized' the attributes of their copper brew kettles in this regard.

Cheers!

 

I haven't been to their brewery in a while, but I remember stainless.

 

You will have to travel to Pilsen and kill some people...