One of the best microbrews I have ever had was a DoppleWeizenbock at Walking Man Brewing in Stevenson, Wa a few years ago. A rich, slightly sweet, pretty strong ale that had flavors of brown sugar, raisins, buttered wheat toast and a little cinnamon and spices. A thick slick feel and a little late burn from the 9%+ ABV. It was 4 years ago, nearly to the day and I can still taste it and have not yet had a similar style beer that even came close.
Earlier this week as I was cruising for recipes on one of my favorite Homebrew sites www.themadfermentationist.com I saw a Weizenbock recipe and knew I had to try it. Not being a “Dopple” (double) it will not be as strong as the one I remembered that day in Stevenson, but hopefully it will bring back some fond memories.
Sticking pretty close to the recipe I found, but substituing a couple of small items, here is the grain bill for mine:
- 8# Wheat
- 4# Dark Munich
- 2# Marris Otter
- 1# Vienna
- 1# Pilsner
- 1# Crystal 120l
Mashed at 152F and batch sparged for a total of 8.25G of run off. Boiled this donwn for about 45min then hopped with 1.75oz of leaf Saaz for 45min which should give me about 20 IBUs.
Starting gravity on this one was 1.072 A little lower then I had hoped but my “efficiency” is always pretty low. If I can get it to ferment down to 1.016 that will come out to about 7.5% ABV which will suit me just fine.
I noticed that it was at 78F right after I transferred it to the fermenter. That is quite a bit too high so I put the wet T-Shirt on it. Within an hour it was going at about 60 bubble per min and the temp was 76F Still to high. Wetted down the t-Shirt some more and put a fan on it. Need to get that down another several degrees if I can.
EDIT – –
09/07/10
Just kegged this one. when I transferred to secondary it was a disappointingly high 1.034 so I ignored it for nearly two months. today it is at 1.021 which is a decent 6.8% ABV It tasted a bit too bitter from the sample I snagged as I was siphoning it into the keg but the flavors were OK. Its got a nice clear light mahogany color, which is about what I was shooting for. We’ll see after it chills and carbonates a bit.
