Morana: Tmave's Birthday in America

This Thursday is the 15th anniversary of the day I spent at Devils Backbone Basecamp brewing the first ever batch of Morana, a Czech style dark lager that I designed for them. I had spent the previous months diving into archives, emailing with multiple brewers, and beer experts, in various languages - English, German, Czech, and Slovak - to learn everything I could about a family of beers that at the time only consisted of about 5% of Czech beer production. Obviously, having only fairly recently decamped from Prague to Virginia, I was also relying on my own remembrances of beers that I had got a taste for in the last couple of years there, when I moved beyond the realms of Gambrinus, Staropramen, and Velkopopovivký Kozel.

My go-to dark lagers at the time were brewed by Kout na Šumavě and available at the fantastic U Slovanské lipy, but it was the 14° version that I was using as my model for Morana. They also had an 18° that as a 0.3l malé pivo made for a wonderful nightcap.

Back in 2010, Czech style dark lager wasn't an accepted "style" on sites that advocated for the rating of beer and it didn't exist in the BJCP style guidelines until 2015. Fun fact, there is a post in BeerAdvocate in which I pointed out that tmavé is different from both schwarzbier and dunkel and thus deserved it's own category, a point met with howls of "too many styles" already, meanwhile black IPA had a moment in the sun and immediately got recognition from the gatekeeping banshees mods.

From my research and deep diving since, I am convinced that Morana was in fact the first authentic Czech style dark lager brewed in the modern American craft brewing industry. By "authentic" here I mean using appropriate ingredients and methods, so yes it has always been double decocted, as well as giving it the time to lager extensively. When it was first released, I was transported, Anton Ego style, back to the pubs of Žižkov, Nusle, and Karlín. It has since been brewed about half a dozen times, and as Jason and co have invested in open fermenters, horizontal lagering tanks, and the like, it has got better and better with every brewing.

All of this came rushing back to me this last weekend, as I was lazily scrolling through the Memories feature on Facebook and saw something mentioned about looking forward to being at the brewery to help make the first batch. With that in mind, I changed my homebrew plans for this weekend, out went my next batch of Vienna lager, and in came a 15th anniversary brew of Černý Lev, my homebrew version of Morana.

Previous batches have used the traditional German malts from Weyermann, but as you may know if you've been following my social media for a while, I am committed to using my local malting company, Murphy & Rude, for all my malt needs. As such, a slight redesign was required. My grist for this weekend then is:

• 75% Virginia Pils
• 10% CaraMel Light (similar to CaraVienne)
• 10% Munich 9
• 5% Cimmerian Black (similar to Carafa III Special)

For the hopping, I am of course using Saaz for flavour and aroma, but going with Sterling for bittering:

• 16 IBU Sterling for 60 minutes
• 9 IBU Saaz for 30 minutes
• 6 IBU Saaz for 15 minutes

For the yeast, good old W34/70 is getting to chew through the planned 14° wort to hopefully give me an ABV of around 5.6%. Brewfather says that 34/70 has an apparent attention of 81%, but going through my notes on previous brews, I average about 75% so I am not too worried about drying it out.

One major change from the last time I brewed this recipe is that I will be doing a decoction mash, in this case a double decoction, as I outlined in this post last year.

Once the yeast has done it's thing, it will get 42 days at near zero before being tapped in my kitchen as the first homebrew beer of 2026, on February 1st. The last 14 days of that will be gently, and slowly, carbing in the kegerator - though I am toying with the idea of getting a spunding valve and letting it carbonate naturally...

If this batch turns out like previous batches of Černý Lev, I will be very happy.