Black lager grain bill

[octoscott]

When making a black lager is it simply a regular lager bill, plus the addition of say 5% black malt or am i way off here?

Eg;

90% Lager
5% Wheat
5% Black malt

[Matt12398]

It depends how roasty you want your dark lager. Typically your European brewers are going to be using Carafa or Carafa Special. Carafa Special is the dehusked version and imparts more colour than roastiness. Alternatively adding black malt or roasted barley to your sparge will give you colour with less roastiness. Carabohemian might be something worth considering as an addition also.

Schwarzbiers/dark lagers I've tasted have always been subdued on the roastiness.

[octoscott]

Thanks for that Matt.

I'll try a late addition of black malt as I have it on hand and see how much roastyness it imparts.

[Barley Water]

When I think "Black Lager" I think Swartzbier. I agree with the previous poster; the way our German buddies are doing it is with the dehusked Carafa malt. Adding the dark grains near the end of the sparge is one technique used to reduce the roast flavors in the beer (hot water will pull the tannins out of the grain leading the the acidic/harsh flavors so limiting contact reduces the problem). Late last year I made a Milk Stout and cold steeped all the dark grains; in a word it came out awsome, very smooth (and as a point of reference I am extremely picky). What I did was run the dark malts through a blender so they were almost powdered then steeped them for 24 hours in about a quart of water per pound. I then filtered the resulting liquid through my hop spider and dumped it into the boil with about 5 minutes to shut down. This technique is perfectly suited to doing a Swartzbier and that is one of my projects this coming year. A buddy of mine made the Swartzbier recipe included in the book written by the Great Jamil Z and it was very, very good. Once you get your beer really smooth you can start to fool around with the %'s of roast barley, black malt and carafa to get just the amount of roast you like in your beer. As always with some of the crazy crap I try, your milege may vary.

[Rookie]

I have a three gallon batch of IIPA going that I'm going to make into a black IIPA. The plan is to cold steep 12 ounces of midnight wheat for 24 hours, boil it for 5 minutes, and add it to the FV.
I did some experimenting last year and midnight wheat is a really good choice for color with little roastiness, as is caraffa.

[Dave-Leeds]

I made a black lager a while ago and i used carafa special 3 and choc malt got the recipe from gregs book.

its been in bottle about 3 weeks maybe abit longer and its a cracking drink with strong centenial flavours.

was going to leave the bottles for a while but i carnt help drinking them its that good