Sunday, May 6, 2012

Double German lager brewing



I finally made the leap and am doing my first lager. Lagers are not really much harder than ales, except that temperature control during fermentation is much more important. Lager yeast ferments at a lower temperature than you can get from leaving the fermenter in the basement.
Ever since I got this chest freezer, I have been waiting to make the move - And today is the day.
I wanted to make the most of today's brew session and end up with two beers. To keep things simple, I decided to go with generic German lager and Oktoberfest. This would let me use the same mash and hops, with the divergence after the boil.  The only differences are the yeast and I will water down the lager a little.

A few days ago I made large starters of wyeast bohemian lager and octoberfest blend yeasts.

The day ended up being quite productive. In addition to ten gallons of beer, we made a sour dough yeast starter, took the kids to mayfair, mowed the lawn, cleaned the basement - All while I monitored a job for work.

Back to the beer - I opted for simple to save time and let me multitask a little. Single infusion mash at 152dg.  My mash tun was filled to the top, but rather uneventful.  First run and 2 sparges later, I had 12 gallons to work with.  Making a 10 gallon batch in a 10 gallon pot can be a bit tricky, so I split the wort - 8 gallons into the main kettle and 3.5 in a smaller pot on another burner. I combined these while it was cooling.
I ended up with 4.5 gallons in the octoberfest and 4 gallons in the lager. This seems low, but it was stronger than expected (1.064 sg) so I can water them down to 5 gallons each.
After filling the fermenters, I collected some more wort to feed some wild yeast starters I have and make the sour dough starter.

It was a tight fit, but I got the two buckets into the chest freezer with 4 kegs. I did have to remove the cider keg.  After initial fermentation at 50dg, I will let it warm up to finish off for a few weeks.  After that, the Lager gets 1 month of cold storage.  The Oktoberfest 3 months.

Notes:
Full recipe here.
Measuring out the grain, I realized I was 6# short - So emergency trip to the Growler in the morning.
1:30pm - Started heating water and crushed the grains
 Infused 30qt at 168dg for 152dg mash at 1.4qt/#
2:30 pm Sparging:
   1.  4.75 gals @ 21.7Brix (1.091sg)
   2.  5.25 gals @ 11.5Brix (1.046sg)
   3.  2 gals @ 7.5 Brix (1.03sg)
4pm Start boil
  2 hop additions into the 8 in the main pot
  3.5 gallons in another pot
5pm combined and cooled
6pm - 8.5 gallons into the fermentors at 16Brix (1.064)
  Will add .5 gals water to Oktoberfest for vOG=1.059 
  Will add 1 gals water to Lager for vOG=1.051

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