Session Amber Lager (Accidental Munich Dunkel): Tasting and Recipe

Wow, about 2 months since my last post! That's a record I think. One of the reasons why is that I have decided to wait to post recipes until I do the tasting too. So I have been brewing, but the posts will go up later.

For this beer, I was looking to make a beer that would be reminiscent of an Ayinger lager, especially their Oktoberfest, although once again I did not have their exact lager strain (which would be the Wyeast "Hella Bock" seasonal strain). I wanted it to be dark, melanoidin rich, and slightly sweet, with a big flavor profile but low alcohol. I wasn't looking to make a lager "to style", but I think it's a great example of a Munich Dunkel.

TASTING NOTES:

Appearance: Dark brown with a stable tan head that leaves a great lacing. Ruby highlights, clear but not "filtered" clear.

Aroma: Dark toasted breadcrusts, with a slight fruity sweetness from crystal malts. Very little to no hop aroma, slight alcohol contribution. Robust maltiness and a clean lager profile with maybe just a touch of sulfur (which dissipated as beer spent more time lagering).

Flavor: Toasty, Munich malt derived breadcrust, Moderate sweetness, low caramel flavor, but balanced more towards toasty flavors from malts. Moderate bitterness, very clean. Slight trace of hop flavor, then it ends with dry, toasty malt and clean residual bitterness.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, a little chewy, hearty enough for winter or fall but not too thick or filling. Moderate carbonation, low alcohol warmth, dry finish with just a touch of astringency.

Overall: This beer is a hit with Clarissa, who has a high appreciation for drinkable, flavorful session beers (you know, the kind us beer geeks think are "boring" and hardly ever brew). I like it a lot, and it's very close to what I was going for, but still I see room for improvement. I'd like to reduce the "bready" impact just a touch, and increase the perception of a light sweetness by dropping the IBU's just a touch. It's a great "dinner" beer, and you can have an imperial pint and go back for another. This keg definitely won't last long.

Recipe: Session amber lager

Recipe Specifications

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Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal

OG: 1.048

FG: 1.015

ABV: 4.3%

Estimated Color: 15.5 SRM

Estimated IBU: 23.1 IBUs

Mash Efficiency: 88.00 %

Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:

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5 lbs 8.0 oz Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 61.5 %

2 lbs Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 2 22.4 %

8.0 oz Melanoiden Malt (20.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.6 %

12.0 oz Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM) Grain 3 8.4 %

3.0 oz Carafa III (525.0 SRM) Grain 5 2.1 %

17.00 g Perle [7.10 %] - First Wort 90.0 min Hop 6 19.2 IBUs

14.00 g Perle [7.10 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 7 3.8 IBUs

1.0 pkg Bohemian Lager (Wyeast Labs #2124) [124. Yeast 8 -

Notes:

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4 gallons water, 1 gr. gypsum, 2 gr. CaCl, 2 gr. CaCO3

Mash in to 125F, 15 min.

Raised to 153 over 10 min, hold 30 min

Raised to 158 over 5 min, hold 15 min

Raised to 168 over 5 min, rest 5 min

sparge w/ 5 gal at 168 (no minerals)

Collect 6.8 gallons at 1.044

Boil 90 minutes, yeast nutrient and whirlfloc at 10 min.

End of boil: top up to 6 gallons (hot)

whirlpool & rest 10 min

chill thru plate chiller to 62

2 min O2

leave in garage at ambient temp (48) until visible fermentation

cooled to 50 degrees by 8 hours and visibly fermenting

fermented at 48-50 for 2 weeks

brought inside for diacetyl rest (65ish) for 1 week

11/23 Racked to keg, aged 3 weeks at 35 before drinking

Starter: 3750 ml stirplate starter 4 days ahead at room temp, decanted. Bohemian Lager yeast.

Golden Lager Tasting

Here's a tasting of the "Golden Lager" I did brewed quite a few months back.

5.2% ABV, 28 IBU's

Aroma: "Beery" Lager aroma, moderate spicy/herbal hop character, slight malt sweetness, pretty big toasted bread/ graham cracker aroma from Munich malt & melanoidins. Very clean lager fermentation with almost no noticeable esters. Clean alcohol, no diacetyl.

Appearance: Very clear, though obviously not filtered, deep golden color, not a huge head but a well-retained white head that leaves a lacing. Fairly spritzy carbonation, just right for a traditional lager.

Flavor: Big malt flavor up front with a moderate caramel flavor, big toasted bready character, and moderate residual sweetness. Bitterness is moderate with a higher than average hop flavor than most German lagers of its type. Finishes malty but a touch of natural acidity helps dry the aftertaste. Bready malts come through again after the swallow. Fermentation character is very clean, no off flavors and you almost don't notice the alcohol at all.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body with noticeable dextrins give it a creamy texture. Lively bubbles. slight acidity provides more of a thirst-quenching impression

Overall: This beer really fits the bill for a Dortmunder or lighter-colored version of an Oktoberfest. This was a beer that, when younger, definitely had a bit too much finish hop profile going on, that sort of got in the way of the malt complexities. It still does have more than average hop aroma/flavor for a German style lager, but it's much better integrated. The additional lagering time has really helped round this beer out substantially (I use the word "lagering" a bit loosely since it really just sat in a keg at about 38 degrees for a few more months). My main complaint is that the Munich malt comes off as a bit too heavy, or maybe it's coming more from the carahell, but I get a little too much bready flavor in the finish that almost makes it seem earthy or vegetal, if that makes any sense. I would play around with the proportion of specialty malts a bit, perhaps lowering the percentage of both Munich malt and carahell, and adding back a little caramunich for color and residual sweetness. I would also reduce the finishing hops by a half-ounce. I like the yeast, but it also might be fun to play around with a "malty" lager yeast, as opposed to this "clean, dry" version that is admittedly a great workhorse lager strain. If I wanted to perfect this beer though, I would probably start by adjusting the malt and hop bill, and then play with the yeast later once I got that dialed in. Overall it's a very good drinking beer, quaff-able, with the overly bready character being slightly annoying and keeping me from going back for a second pint, but the lager brewing technique is very spot-on and that's what's most important.

Rest In Peace - Chick Chick Chick: 2009-2011

Our little kitty passed away on Valentine's day, and we are really very sad. She was hit by a car and it looks like she went instantly, so at least she didn't suffer too much. We had to bury the poor little thing in the yard, and we only had her for one year. I wish we had had a way to keep her out of that busy street, but I don't think cats should be held hostage indoors. She was such a friendly, playful outdoor cat, hanging out in the neighbors' yards and even sneaking in their houses sometimes. She would hang out with me in the garage while I was brewing and beg to be petted or played with, which was annoying because I didn't want to get a bunch of cat hair in the sanitizer. My point is that we knew the busy road was a risk, but I believe cats should be allowed outdoors. It's just part of their nature to play outside and have adventures. So I guess we need to figure out some kind of invisible fence for the next cat if we decide to have one here, or we could just wait until we live somewhere farther off from a busy street. Damn, life sucks sometimes. I will miss her so much, she was really a great cat and she gave us a lot of joy. The house feels lonely today without her around.

Anyway, I haven't posted any brewing stuff here lately because I've been really busy, in a good way. I have brewed 2 beers: a Belgian Dubbel that I'm planning on splitting some off of and doing some experimentation with (adding quince), and I also brewed a 10 gallon batch of Flanders red that is destined for a wine barrel. I have been wanting to do a barrel-aged sour ale for a while now, and my friend Walker offered up his basement to host the project. We have 6 brewers who are in on the project, the beers are brewed, and now we need to pick up a barrel. So I'll post these recipes later when the dubbel is on tap and when the barrel is full.

Other than that, the reason I really haven't posted is I've been working 6 days a week. I'm still brewing at Alameda 4 days, and I also picked up a couple days at Cascade Brewing, which so far has been a lot of keg washing and filling, but it should be a lot of fun as we get to the more interesting things like working with barrels and all the other fun beers that they do.

So, with this much work I think I'll be slowing down on homebrewing a bit, maybe brewing once a month or something like that. I'll try to keep this blog updated, but if I really end up working my butt off, it might become fairly sporadic. Time will tell... I have decided I really want to keep this blog mainly about homebrewing and leave the pro brewing stuff at work mostly.

Anyway, happy brewing to you all. I'll try to catch up on a few tastings soon. I have the rauchbier that is tasting really nice and I need to go back and do a tasting of the gold lager, and the recently kegged IPA. Catch ya soon.

HUGE Baltic Porter & small beer - with Sean Burke

I had been kicking around some "collaboration brewing" ideas with my friend Sean Burke, and we both knew that we didn't want to do something normal. It was our first time brewing together, and we wanted to do something with some gusto. We were both enthused by the idea of a Baltic Porter, and we toyed with the idea of doing some home-smoked malt in it, before ditching that idea because neither of us has a smoker. We finally settled on trying for a huge Baltic Porter and a small beer from the second runnings. We might mess with half the batch by adding oak and/or spirits.

Neither of us knew just quite how huge the Baltic Porter would really be, and we were pretty shocked to see it is one of the highest O.G. beers that either of us have ever brewed, and a lager at that.

The brewday really maxed out my "brewhouse's" capabilities, and because of this we ran into a few classic homebrew-y snags. I found myself apologizing quite a few times for the unforeseen problems, not to mention wishing that we had Sean's march pump on hand for the end of the boil.

For starters, we mashed in a keggle with an EZ-masher, but not only did we slightly scorch the grain bed when trying to raise the temp a bit, but we also knocked loose the EZ-masher screen in the process somehow, and the result was a completely stuck mash. Luckily we had an extra cooler mash-tun on hand, or we would have been totally, completely screwed!

After transfering the entire mash to the cooler, things went pretty smooth until the end of the boil, when we found ourselves losing the siphon, losing flow through the heat exchanger! That was fixable by getting the pot higher and having someone stand up there stirring the kettle to free up any hops from the kettle screen, so it could run freely to the fermenter. This was somewhat exacerbated, I'm sure, by the incredibly viscous 1.117 O.G. wort.

Despite all the setbacks, we had a fun time and didn't get too stressed out about the little snafu's. We also managed to get a pretty decent small beer out of the process which came in at 1.030 O.G. I fermented mine as a "dark mild", pitching the Wyeast West Yorkshire ale yeast. It is already drinking pretty well after only 8 days and comes in at a sessionable 2.5%. It's a decent beer, but it could use some more caramel sweetness, without which it comes off as slightly roasty and harsh. Still, it's hard not to like a sessionable, easy to drink ale that was fast and basically free to make.

Sean pitched his portion with a lager yeast which he plans to use as a giant starter wort for another lager. It will be interesting to try the small beers side by side.

The huge Baltic Porter got a full (5 gallon batch) yeast cake pitch of 3rd generation Bohemian Lager yeast, from the just-transferred rauchbier that is tasting really nice. I did not post that recipe here, so here it is: Jamil's rauchbier from Brewing Classic Styles, brewed with 70% Rauchmalt. That's the recipe. I obviously haven't tried it fully lagered yet, but all I can say is, try brewing it. It's great. We drank a full pint of green lager that had been held aside for a flavor/gravity sample, and it already tasted super fine. 70% is not too much smoke, and seems quite gentle so far.

Our cat "Chk Chk Chk" also hung out for the brewday, but she was pretty lazy. She mostly sat around and whined, occasionally entertaining herself by jumping onto the kegerator, which I try to keep as a sanitary work surface, and leaving muddy paw prints all over it. Damned good-for-nothing cats.

A couple things about the recipe:

1) The pre-boil/post boil gravities on the baltic porter don't work out. So I'm not sure what went wrong there but the O.G. was 1.117. Possible a combination of inaccurate pre-boil reading and post-boil volume measurement?

2) As you will see with the grainbill and hop timings, we weren't really concerned with stylistic accuracy here, just making what sounded great.

Main Mash:

27 lb. Weyermann Pils

10 lb. Briess Munich 10 L

1 lb. C-60

2 lb. C-77

1 lb. C-120

1 lb. pale chocolate

1 lb. chocolate

1 lb. Carafa special II

Mash: 11 gallons at 152ish, for almost 2 hours by the time we actually got it transferred to the cooler.

Sparge: 21 gallons at 170

Continuous fly-sparge, switching over to second kettle once first kettle was full.

Beer 1: Baltic Porter

13.5 gallons pre-boil 1.090 (???Doesn't add up)

Boil 90 min:

25 gr. Magnum pellet 11.5% AA 90 min

44 gr. Warrior pellet 15.8% AA 90 min

yeast nutrient & whirlfloc 10 min

56 gr. Sterling whole 7% AA 0 min

11.5 gallons post-boil

oxygen for 2.5 minutes

pitch full yeast cake of Wyeast 2124 at 54 degrees

1.117 O.G., 68 IBUs

Fermented at 50 for 8 days, then raised to 56 when bubbles slowed down.

1/2/11 Racked to secondary fermenter, tastes very promising but still at 1.050. Looks like the primary yeast shit the bed right at 9% ABV. Looking into pitching more yeast, hoping to get it down to 1.035.

Beer 2: "small beer / dark mild"

10.5 gallons pre-boil at 1.022

Boil 90 min

8 oz. Belgian amber candi sugar rocks 90 min

28 gr. Northern Brewer whole 7.8% 35 min

O.G. 1.030

15 IBU

Fermented my half with Wyeast West Yorkshire at 68-70

F.G. 1.011, ABV 2.5%

Lager season opens! Golden Dortmunder-ish lager

What would these guys drink? Probably not what I just brewed yesterday. It is probably too "heavy", and you might not be able to read a newspaper through it. Never the less, lager season is officially open at Chez Wonton and I felt a hunting image would do it the most justice.

Fredo! Wait, I mean, Stan, you are so melancholy and tragic, I want to dedicate a beer to you. Here it goes: A maltier than usual Dortmunder-ish beer, or whatever. A style free lager that is golden and bready, but balanced with a bitter bite. Let's forget style for a minute, brew a beer, and see how it comes out.

Check it out. I made an insulating jacket for my stainless mash tun, so I can keep it warm outside without constantly reheating it. Maybe a little overkill, but I set it on a heating blanket after I mashed in and it only lost 1-2 degrees over 60 minutes. I'll take that. This is made out of 3 layers of Reflectix and heat resistant tape, and yes, it was more labor than I thought it would be, but it's done! And seemingly working very well.

I wanted to get the Ayinger lager strain for this one (Whitelabs WLP830), but it would have taken 3 weeks just to get through the homebrew store. (Ayinger Oktoberfest-Marzen is probably in my top 10 favorite beers. I just can't get over that soft, bready and wonderful melanoidin character.) I didn't want to wait, so I went with the Wyeast 2124 Bohemian lager strain. I used the same yeast last year and had some sulfur or DMS issues in the first 2 beers. This yeast seems to kick off a butt-load of sulfur, so I will be monitoring that more closely and making sure it has plenty of time to off-gas and ferment out before capping it. I am also chilling the beers more rapidly to prevent DMS formation after the boil

Here's the recipe. Water is adjusted to emphasize the malts, hopefully giving it a softer overall profile. The bittering hops were 2008 Magnum, which were sealed in mylar. I adjusted the AA% down from 13.6% to 11.5% for age, but in reality this beer might taste like more IBU's than the recipe calculates. I'm still not sure if it is ever really necessary to adjust AA% down for time, if the hops are treated right.

Cazale Lager - Brewed 11/3/10

Recipe is for 6.9 gallons pre-boil, 5.3 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.052 F.G. 1.013 ABV 5.2% IBU's 28

All malt is from Weyermann:

4.5 lb. Pils

4 lb. Munich

1 lb. Carahell

10 gr. Magnum pellets (2008, adjusted down to 11.5%) 65 min

28 gr. Sterling whole 7.9% 15 min

Mash: 4 gallons + 3 gr. CaCl + 1 gr. Gypsum

151 for 60 minutes

Sparge: 5 gallons + 3 gr. CaCl + 1 gr. Gypsum

Collect 6.9 gallons at 1.040 = 77% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes

Wyeast nutrient & Whirlfloc at 15 min

Chill to 59 through heat exchanger

oxygen 90 seconds

Pitch 3 liter stirplate starter of Wyeast 2124 (decanted)

chilled to 50 over 12 hours

Ferment at 50 for primary

Seemed to be nearly done after only 7 days!

11/10/10 Moved inside for a D-rest at ambient temp.

11/15/10 Racked to secondary to collect yeast. VERY bready! A good deal of yeast in suspension adds to the breadyness. Some sulfur and acetaldehyde still there. Maybe a week more before I keg and crash it.

12/14/10 Racked to keg. Tastes pretty good so far. Clean lager.

Soon up, a really smokey Rauchbier al la Schlenkerla

Collabos with a Yard Gnome

My good friend Paul and I brewed a couple batches together recently, and I'm just now catching up to posting those recipes. Once again I have to work (occasionally) which means I don't have as much time to get cracked out on strong coffee and stare at the computer screen. The job is pretty cool so far, helping out at Green Bottling, a truck based bottling line that contract bottles bombers for over 20 breweries in Oregon. It's a cool way to see the inside of a lot of breweries, make connections with the brewers, and work with some cool people. So far I have helped them bottle at Bridgeport, 10 Barrel in Bend, and Lompoc. We are headed to Ashland tomorrow for a 4 day bottling binge.

The first brew we did was a flanders red, using Al B's "Rodenbug" blend on its 2nd generation, or 3rd if you count the starter I made in between batches. The recipe is very close to the parameters set in Jeff Sparrow's Wild Brews book, although we used flaked triticale instead of corn or flaked wheat. The fermentation got a little rambunctious in the primary and blew the tinfoil off one carboy, good thing it's a sour beer.

Flanders Red, Brewed on 1/30/10

Recipe is for 12.9 gallons pre-boil, 11.7 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.060 IBU's 16

12.25 lb. Vienna Malt

5 lb. Flaked Triticale

2 lb. Aromatic malt

2 lb. Caravienne

1.5 lb. crystal 15

.75 lb. Special B

.5 lb. crystal 120

.5 lb. crystal 75

52 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% AA 60 min

Mash 7.5 gallons water with the following additions:

5 gr. chalk

1 gr. gyspum

2 gr. calcium chloride

2 gr. baking soda

Mash in to 156

Forgot to put in the triticale! Put in at 20 minutes, dropping the temp to 148.

Pulled .75 gallons of mash liquor and heated to boiling, adding back to mash.

This raised temp back to 158

Total mash time 75 minutes

Sparge with 8.5 gallons at 170

Collect 12.9 gallons at 1.054 = 81% efficiency

Boil 60 minutes

yeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Chilled to 70, aerated by shaking for 2 minutes

pitched a slurry of AlB's Rodenbug blend / cali ale yeast

Fermented in the mid 60's for about 3 weeks, then racked to secondary for aging. Gravity was at 1.020.

The second brew was a baltic porter, a style that we both like a lot, and Paul's first lager. We started off with an intensive baltic porter tasting at Belmont Station, but sadly most of the beers were overly aged and overly oxidized, tasting of nothing but prunes and cardboard. The best one we had is the one I have repeatedly poked fun at Paul for drinking, Black Boss, because I'm of the opinion that there's no way they could sell it for $2 for 16 oz. in the states and actually put quality ingredients in it. But actually it tastes great, striking a similar flavor balance to a Belgian Dark strong, in that the alcohol warmth helps to keep it from being overly sweet or syrupy. I'm pretty sure there are almost no hops in Black Boss , which is probably one way they pinch the pennies in making it. Either that or it's government subsidized!
We tried the Fuller's London Porter too because of a note in the BJCP style guidelines about Baltic Porters sharing some malt similarities to brown porters.

Paul took some nice photos of the brewday and you can see them here. Note the cold steep on the carafa malt. That was a first for both of us.

Unfortunately, the first 2 lagers I made this year seem to have some DMS issues, which has to be from the long time it took me to chill the wort (about 40 minutes with a plate chiller). I'm going to try to alleviate some of the corny DMS aroma by bubbling CO2 through the beer repeatedly. I'll post an update if that process helps at all. We cooled the baltic porter using an immersion chiller to get it to 90 or so to avoid DMS formation, and then ran it through a plate chiller to knock out to pitching temp.

Baltic Thunderbolt!

Recipe is for 13.5 gallons pre-boil, 12 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.076 F.G. 1.015 ABV 8.1% IBU's 30

19 lb. Weyermann pilsner malt

6 lb. munich malt

3 lb. caramunich 60

1.5 lb. crystal 120

(2 lb. carafa special 550L, steeped at room temp for 12 hours in .5 gallons water)

37 gr. Yakima Magnum whole 13.5% AA 60 min

Mash:

7.5 gallons plus:

7 gr. chalk

3 gr. calcium chloride

3 gr. baking soda

Mash in all grains except the carafa at 150 for 70 minutes

Add the cold steeped carafa and stir in, rest 10 minutes

Sparge with 8 gallons at 168, recirc 5 qt.

Collect 12.75 gallons at 1.072 = 79% efficiency

Topped up to 13.5 gallons

Boil 90 minutes

yeast nutrient & whirlfloc at 10 minutes

Chill to 52 degrees, using immersion chiller and then plate chiller

Aerate by hand for 4 minutes (ran out of oxygen)

pitched 1/2 yeast cake per carboy of wyeast 2124 from the smoked helles

Fermented at 52ish for 3 weeks, then a D-rest at 62 for 1 week

Racked to keg on 3/24, tastes great and none of the DMS flavors that the previous batches had.

Thirsting for Bamberg: Smoked Helles Redux

This recipe is inspired by a singular beer: Schlenkerla Helles. This is the only non-smoked beer made by the Schlenkerla brewery, but because of the residual smoked malt from the brewing equipment and the yeast pitch, this beer has a pleasant smoky flavor. It's a perfect "entry-level" smoked beer. Many of the smokier beers like Schlenkerla Marzen are an acquired taste (and believe me, I've acquired it).

This batch is my second go around on a smoked helles, with very little changes from the first batch. I added a little munich malt for color and background flavor, and carapils for foam stability. One thing I noticed about the Schlenkerla Helles last time I tried it is a more bitter, firm finish than my homebrew. That bears out when looking at the 30 IBU's they claim. But I like my recipe where it's at, and I'm not trying to make an exact clone. The name of this beer comes from the fact that I first served it last year at my 30th birthday party. 31 is coming up!

"30 Rauch"

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 6 gallons post-boil, all grain

1.051 O.G. 22 IBU's

6.75 lb. Weyermann Pils malt

1.75 lb. Rauchmalt

.5 lb. munich malt

.25 lb. aromatic malt

.25 lb. cara-pils malt

39 gr. Halltertau pellets 3.9% AA 60 minutes

Mash: 4.5 gallons H20 + 2 gr. gypsum + 2 gr. calcium chloride

153 for 60 minutes

Sparge with 4.5 gallons + 2 gr. gypsum + 2 gr. calcium chloride at 168

Collect 7 gallons at 1.044 = 86% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes

Wyeast nutrient and whirlfloc at 10 minutes

Chill to 50 using plate chiller over 40 minutes

Oxygen for 2 minutes

Pitch .75 cups thick slurry of Wyeast 2124 from Pilsner

Ferment at 50-52 degrees

I gotta say it was a good day: Hoppy Pilsner and Carbonnade Flammande

I did some brewing on Thursday, and some cooking too, and it occurred to me while enjoying some well-earned vittles after the brew session that hey, today was a good day. Just like that classic rap song from 1993, except I guess instead of playing dominoes and not having to use my AK, I just brewed a nice pilsner, and instead of getting the Fatburger at 2 in the morning, I made a fancy beef stew from Belgium. But sentimentally, it was very much the same.

I'm pretty psyched to have finally gotten lager season rolling. I usually get to do at least a couple of lagers each winter, but I got a late start this year since I had a few other yeast strains already in action. I'm planning on doing at least another batch of the smoked helles (pretty much a Schlenkerla Helles clone) and a Baltic Porter with Paul Key.

When I design a recipe, whether it's "to style" or free-style, I like to think a lot about how I want to final beer to taste, smell, and look like. I like to keep a couple of commercial examples in mind if there is anything close to what I am looking to target. For example, if you are talking about German Pilsner, you have anything from Bitburger or Radeberger pils (very light, clean, and somewhat hoppy but pretty much a lawnmower beer), to something pretty radically hoppy and aromatic like Victory Prima Pils. More often than not, there's a huge range within the style to work with. Less so for German beers for sure, but still there's a range. This is why I think it's funny that some brewers make a point to say it's below them to brew to style. It's as if they think you can't make a creative expression if you stick pretty much within a recognized style. If you think about that for more than a second, you realize that's just not true. It's like saying that a cubist or a surrealist isn't really a painter. Not that beer is fine art, or that it has to be taken so seriously, but I guess art works as a good analogy. Maybe a food analogy would work even better: Do all cheeseburgers taste the same? Of course not!

Anyway (end of rant), I wanted my beer to be more on the hoppy, full-flavored end of the spectrum, like Victory, Jever and even Sly Fox Pils. I wanted to really push the hop flavor and bitterness, and have some residual body to counter the bitterness. I had a lot of noble hops still in the mylar package from 2008, and they were smelling great. I didn't adjust the alpha acids down for time on any of the hops still in the mylar.

One issue I had with this recipe is an extremely long time to go from the boil pot through the heat exchanger. I think there was a little too much hop matter and I just had to wait 40 minutes to knock out into the carboy, but when I did, the wort was at a great pitching temperature: 50 degrees. That's the lowest I've ever pitched a lager yeast, which should make for a really clean fermentation.

The Recipe:

7 gallons pre-boil, 5.5 gallons post boil, all grain

O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.012 ABV 5.7% IBU's 45

9 lb. Weyermann Pils malt

.5 lb. carafoam

13 gr. Hallertau (1 plug) FWH

14 gr. Perle pellets 6.5% 60 min

8 gr. Magnum whole 12% 60 min

56 gr. Czech Saaz pellets 3% 20 min

28 gr. Czech Saaz pellets 3% 0 min

28 gr. Hallertau pellets 4% 0 min

Mash: 4 gallons + 5 gr. gypsum, 2 gr. calcium chloride

152 for 60 minutes

Sparge with 5 gallons at 166

Collect 7 gallons at 1.043 = 84% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes

wyeast nutrient & whirlfloc at 15 minutes

Whirlpool, rest 10 miuntes. Chill to 50 degrees, took 40 minutes to run through heat exchanger! Ground water was run though a copper pre-chiller in an ice water bath.

Collected 5.1 gallons at 1.055, pitched Wyeast 2124 Bohemian lager yeast at 50 degrees.

Fermented at 52 degrees for 12 days.

Pulled into the house on 1/26/10 for a D-rest for 4 days

Pulled back out in the garage to chill to 50 and racked to a keg on 2/2/10

OK, now here are some cooking pics of the Carbonnade Flammande, and this is the recipe that I based it loosely off of. The carrots are not traditional, I just felt like adding some vegetables. I used my flanders red homebrew as the stew base, which is still a little lacking in acidity. After I pulled a sample for cooking, I added some more bugs to the keg to help sour it up, and a couple of bottle of the Belgian Dark Strong to give it a little more maltiness and sugars for the bugs to eat.

The prep...the meat is browned. Use a well marbled meat, unless you like dry stew meat.

Most of the online recipes do not specifically call for Flanders red ale, but it's best to use a sour malty ale. If you can't find that, you can probably fake it with a Belgian Dubbel and a dash of vinegar and sugar.

The end product was excellent. I think it's traditionally served with noodles or pommes frites. I used some leftover garlicky mashed potatoes.

Here's another cooking project that Clarissa and I have been getting into: the no-knead bread technique that is very popular and turns out a great loaf.

Our first loaf, above was made with all bread flour and baked at 500 degrees. It was OK but it was not entirely done when we took it out of the oven. The crust was getting very dark but the inside was a bit moist. So it steamed out the crust and made it a bit chewy, but it was still pretty good.

Here's the second loaf, where we used 1/3 whole wheat flour and 2/3 bread flour. It tasted every bit as awesome as it looks here. We turned our oven temp down to 450 so it had plenty of time to finish cooking before the crust got too dark.

Smoked Helles and Brewday Slideshow

It occurred to me that maybe one of the 2 or 3 people who check out this blog might be interested to see my brewing setup in action, and for me to explain my typical brewing process. There are many sites, including How To Brew, that go much deeper into a textbook brew day, but I think my setup and techniques may help certain brewers, especially those new to all-grain brewing, or those who want to brew all-grain, but don't have the luxury of outdoor space to do so. I've really tried to concentrate on simple, low-tech equipment that does not sacrifice beer quality or consistency.

So I'll take you through a slide show of my smoked helles brewday.

To see the commentary, click "show info" in the upper right-hand corner.

The inspiration for the smoked helles recipe was a commercial beer. If you have never had the Schlenkerla smoked helles, you should seek it out, because it's amazing. I have only seen it on draft in NYC and Philly. This beer is so wonderfully, subtly smokey, that even people like me who usually don't like smoked beers should try it. This is a true session beer with just enough smoke to make you think of food, and go back for another pint. I wanted to try a beer like this, and maybe even give it a little more smoke than Schlenkerla's version (although not near the level of smoke found in their darker beers).

I had never done a beer with smoked malt, so I wanted to get a little input from the pope - Jamil Zainacheff. He recommended that I shoot for 7-10% Rauchmalt for a very subtle flavor. I was going to try 10%, but when I was tasting this grain, it was just so good to eat, I decided to take it up to 17% of the total grain. I figured if it was too smokey for a helles, I could blend in a small amount of my upcoming Schwarzbier and just call it a rauchbier. And it is definitely smokier than the Schlenkerla version, I tried it when I transferred it from the primary to a keg. But it tastes great, and I can't wait to try it in a month when it's fully lagered and carbonatated.

Smoked Munich Helles

Recipe is for 6.2 gallons post-boil, all-grain

O.G. 1.049 F.G. 1.012 IBU's 20

8 lb, 6 oz. Durst Pils malt

1 lb. 12 oz. Rauchmalt

2 oz. aromatic malt

25 gr. German Tradition pellets 5.7% 60 min.

Mash: 3.75 gallons water, no mineral additions.

Mash in to 151. Checked pH at 15 minutes: about 5.3

One hour at 151, followed by a mash out to 170 over 15 minutes.

Sparged with 5 gallons at 170. Collected 7.1 gallons at 1.044 = 79% efficiency.

Boil 90 minutes, hops at 60, whirlfloc at 15, 1/2 tsp. Wyeast nutrient at 10 min.

Chilled (see slide show) to 54 and racked to carboy, aerated by hand for 10 min.

Pitched the yeast: A decanted, 3 liter starter of Whitelabs 830 made on a stirplate.

Fermented for 2 weeks at 52, racked to keg on 1/4/09.