Let’s do a brew day recap with a video to boot!

Mike and I have been tasked to brew Yule Lagers.  What is a Yule lager?  It’s up to your own interpretation, I think.

Certainly, it has to be a lager but what kind of lager is the brewer’s choice.

I am not sure what Mike is brewing but my feeling was that a dark, roasty lager would be good to the celebrate the Yule time.

So I put together a black lager recipe and brewed it up.  The big thing to give this beer color and roastiness was the use of roasted barley.

The  other interesting ingredients for this beer was the use of homegrown hops.  I had 2.5 ounces of Mt. Hood hops to add in late in the boil for flavor and aroma properties in the finished beer.  If you check out the video, you can see both additions.

There is something striking about using whole hops that you grew in your backyard in your kettle.   It seems more magical than tossing some pellets in there.  I am probably making something out of nothing but take a look at the action in the video and let me know what you think.  If you aren’t convinced, let me know.

The brew day went without any problems.  I didn’t have any issues with the mash or the boil.  One thing that I could have done differently was to start with a large pre-boil volume.  All the whole hops sucked up a good amount of wort that I was not able to get into the fermentor.

Next time, I will compensate for that result by running off 7 to 7.5 gallons from the mash tun before the start the boil and that should leave me with just over 5 gallons at the end.

This lager won’t be ready until late January so it will be late for its namesake season but we won’t change the name.

To Yule Lagers!
Brew On.