Some experience · 20 litres · all grain
Schwarzbier
Black and far lighter than it looks: a clean lager with a restrained, smooth roast and a dry finish. The beer to hand someone who says they do not like dark beer.
Original gravity
1.049
at 72% efficiency
Final gravity
1.012
76% apparent attenuation
Alcohol
4.9%
by volume
Bitterness
20 IBU
Tinseth
Colour
28.2 SRM
55 EBC, Morey
Grain bill
4.60 kg
0.23 kg per litre
Brewed to Schwarzbier, and all five computed figures land inside the published ranges for it.
OG inFG inABV inIBU inSRM inWhat decides this beer
How and when the dark malt goes in. Mashed for an hour, Carafa gives a lager an acrid edge it cannot carry; added at the end, it gives colour and a whisper of cocoa.
Fermentables
| Malt | Weight | Colour | Extract | Of grist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilsner malt | 2.60 kg | 1.8 L | 37 ppg | 57% |
| Munich malt | 1.40 kg | 10 L | 35 ppg | 30% |
| Caramunich | 0.25 kg | 60 L | 34 ppg | 5% |
| Carafa Special Added at vorlauf, not at mash-in. Steeping it briefly gives colour and cocoa without any of the ash. | 0.35 kg | 400 L | 27 ppg | 8% |
Colour and extract are read from the malt reference, not typed into this recipe, so they are the same figures every other page on the site uses.
Crushing your ownGrain mill$92.90Hop schedule
| Hop | Weight | Alpha | Time | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hallertau Mittelfrueh | 33 g | 4% | 60 min | 15.4 IBU |
| Tettnanger | 18 g | 4.5% | 15 min | 4.7 IBU |
Alpha acid varies by crop year and lot, which is why it lives on the recipe rather than on the variety. Brew to the figure printed on your packet and the bitterness will move; the IBU calculator will tell you by how much.
Method
- 01Mash the pale grist at 65C for 60 minutes.
- 02Stir the Carafa in for the last ten minutes only, then run off.
- 03Boil 90 minutes.
- 04Ferment at 10C, diacetyl rest at 18C, then lager four weeks.
Numbers for the day
- Mash
- 65 C for 60 min
- Strike water at 3 L/kg
- 71.2 C
- Strike volume
- 13.8 L
- Boil
- 90 min
- Ferment
- 9-12 C
- Carbonate to
- 2.5 volumes
- Priming dextrose
- 128 g
- Yeast
- German LagerSafLager W-34/70
Strike temperature assumes grain at 20C and priming assumes the beer peaked at 20C after fermentation. Recompute both for your own kitchen on the strike and priming calculators.
For the mashDigital thermometer$12.31
For the fermentTemperature controller$36.00Before you package
Take a gravity reading two days apart and only package when it has not moved. A beer bottled while still fermenting keeps fermenting in the bottle, and the sugar you prime with lands on top of whatever was left. At 2.5 volumes this one needs about 128 g of dextrose for the batch.
To know it has finishedHydrometer and trial jar$21.99