Saturday night on may 12th I brewed up my Munich Smash recipe.   My wife had the weekend away so I seized the opportunity to brew on a Saturday night.  Of course, when an opportunity to brew presents itself on short notice you tend to forget things.  I violated the true Smash recipe because I used two different hops.  I used magnum to bitter and then did Hallertau as planned for my other addition.  I don’t care too much about that because this beer was all about the Munich Malt (10L) anyway.

The wort aroma in my garage was very intense.  Munich certainly has a lot of grainy, bread like aroma to it.  I hope that continues to hold true in the final beer’s aroma.  I tasted a bit of the first runnings of wort and man was it melanoid-rich.  Almost to a scary level.  After I tasted it I thought for sure I had over done it and was certain I was going to hate the brew.  I carried on though and after all the sparging was done I tasted the more appropriately diluted full wort and the assault on my palette was much less.  The flavor still didn’t make me jump for joy as I think it really needs some fermentation character to remove the sweetness.  Full on Munich malt sweetness unfermented smells great, but is too much for my palette.  The color however in the fermentor and kettle was pretty dark.  Much darker than I would have expected.  I think in the glass this will be a deep golden color with reddish hues.  At least that’s what I dream it would be.

This is my first brew in our Master of Lager series as well.  I pitched WLP830, the seminal German Lager yeast from White Labs.  My OG for the batch was 1.056.  I quick look at Mr.Malty Pitching Rate Calculator told me I needed two WLP vials into 1.5L of wort when using a stir plate.  That assumes 97% viability of the starting yeast.  So to be safe, I used two stir plates and split my total starter volume across the two.  I did two 1.2L starters.  The additional total volume will ensure a truly adequate pitch of yeast.

My yeast management and fermentation procedure for this lager was as follows.  I made the yeast starters the night before I brewed (because that’s when the wife left, so Friday night).  They sat on the stir plate until Sunday morning.  Yep the day after I brewed.  This was to ensure they completely fermented out.  I then transferred them to the fridge to crash cool and settle the yeast.  On brew night (saturday), I chilled the wort to 70-72F ish.  I could have gone longer but didn’t need too.  Reason being is that I then put the carboy full of wort in my fermentation chest freezer set to 48F.  Because I wasn’t planning on pitching the yeast until the next day, I knew I could use the chest freezer to chill the beer the rest of the way and not waste more water trying to do it with the chiller.

Sunday got a little hectic for me after the wife came home and I failed to pitch my yeast that day.  I pitched on Monday night, a full two days post brew day.  This is where confidence in your cleaning and sanitation come in.  The wort was sealed up with an airlock and still looked good in the freezer.  (The cold 48F temps helps to suppress wild microbe contaminants too.) Monday night I oxygenated the wort.  Decanted my spent start wort from the flasks and pitches the yeast in.

Tuesday night I had the first early signs of krausen forming.  A good sign things were coming along.  I adjusted my temp controller to 52F to allow it to warm to my desired ferment temp as it became more active.  Wednesday night I cam home to a very nice inch or so of healthy Krausen, a bubbling airlock and an reassuring yet unpleasant sulphur aroma from the yeast.  The temp was 51F.

So off it goes. My first lager in the series.  My plans for the next two are  Helles and an Oktoberfest.  Bock might tempt me too if I get a chance to do one of those too.

Talking with Mike this weekend, we agree yeast management is becoming the most important aspect of our brewing practice.  If we were to go back in time and tell new homebrewers what to work on to improve their beer,  we would suggest practicing making mighty yeast starters for their brews.

For this lager series, I want to replicate the amount and the vitality of yeast that one would have after they brewed a few 5 gallon batches with the same strain.

Noted homebrewer Jamil Zainasheff talks about making yeast starters for all his brews, and big ones especially for lagers or beers with high starting gravities.

My yeast starter is going to be mighty for the Bohemian Pilsner.  The recipe already calls for the equivalent of 4 liquid yeast vials or packets.   Now with the one vial I bought, I need to create a 9 liter starter to get the yeast cell count to match that of 4 vials.

My plan is to do that – create enough wort to make a 9 liter starter and add the yeast vial to it.  Once the fermentation is done for the starter, I will drain the “beer” off of the yeast cake in the fermenter (I will need to use a carboy to create a yeast starter this big).  Then, pour another starter wort on top of the yeast cake – this time it will be 4 gallons strong.

Once fermentation is over for round two of the starter,  I can have my Bohemian Pilsner brew day.  I think think procedure will give me the number of yeast cells I need and in the healthy state they need to be in to make an excellent beer.

Well, this is where is all begins –  The Master of Lagers series.

This summer, these Brew Dudes will be brewing up lagers and trying their best to make excellent examples of specific style.

The first one is the Bohemian Pilsner.   Let’s dive right in, shall we?

So I ordered the ingredients for this recipe.  It has a fairly simple grain bill and a good number of hops by weight.

There’s one ingredient that isn’t on the recipe post but I ordered it – extra light dry malt extract.

I am going to make a few mighty starters for this brew.  The yeast are going to be plentiful and ready to rock.

Let’s drink a few of these this summer.

For my April 2012 brew I hemmed and hawed quite a bit over what to brew.   I have some Stout and a Brown that are drinking nice right now; I wasn’t ready to brew another dark beer.  I just brewed a Pale ale that’s ready to start drinking  this weekend. I have a cherry wheat beer that I finally resurrected from the dead. I have an American Cream Ale that is about 2/3 empty.  I know that I want to rebrew the stout, brown and cream again this year with minor tweaks; but I really wanted to brew something different that all that this time around.

Eventually, I settled on a Hefewiezen.  Then I started to think well how much do I really like a hefe? If I don’t drink it, will my in-laws??? Should I brew the Cream ale for the in-laws (they all live next door too)??

I figured I’d brew an american Hefe because I don’t like clove flavors.  Then I thought I’ll add some orange peel that sounds nice.  They I realized I was just heading down the road to my Harpoon UFO white clone I made a two years ago.

So with all that story out of the way, tonight I’ll gather the equipment up, measure the water and start the yeast for my Orange Wheat recipe (only 5 gallons instead of 10 in the recipe). I’ll be making some modifications and dropping the corriander, just to focus on those orange citrus flavors.  Normally, I’d use the Belgian WLP400 Wit Beer strain, but to satisfy that curiosity without committing to a true Hefe I am using the American Hefe Yeast WLP320.  Much less clove and banana than a WLP300 German Strain. So I am calling it an American Wit Beer…shoot me.

Not as creative but I really like this recipe.  I am trying not to buy too commercial beer much as I am brewing regularly now, so I better get some UFO White like beer in a keg to keep me from buying some.

I’ll toss up some comments tomorrow night as I brew on the Twitter feed and maybe a pic or two as I go.

BREW ON!

Last night I was able to squeeze in my scheduled March brew session.  This was a bit of a relief as I’ve been aiming to brew every third thursday or friday night of each month. (The wife actually challenged me to do this, can you believe it?)

Regardless, last night was an amazingly smooth session.  After four batches down with my new equipment set up things are really starting to roll.  My entire session was done in 4.5 hours, with not prior set-up prep!  I usually try and get setup the night before, but no luck with that this time.  I went into the garage at 6:00PM and was walking out around 10:30.  I couldn’t believe it.

I hope to profile my newly designed set up in upcoming posts.

Anyhow, my last four brews had been malt forward or lighter fare type beers.  I am not a hop-heady guy, but I do on occasion crave a pint of something hoppy.  Not to mention my wife loves hop forward beers.  So if I am going to keep the monthly brew session alive I need to toss in a hoppy beer a couple times.

I was shooting for a 1054 OG and hit it at 1052.  It was actually sort of tough because after the mash I had 7.25 gallons of 1054 wort in the kettle.  So I had to add a gallon of water to the kettle prior to boiling to not end up with 1.065 beer.  1.065 wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but I didn’t have the hops to really make this an IPA.  I need to go back into my notes but I think my system is more efficient that I planned.  Which is fine, I just need to start pulling my recipes back a little bit to account for it.

I pitched two packets of dry US05 Ale yeast, and oxygenated for almost 2 minutes.  I pitched at 62F and set the fermwrap for 64F. I need to go out and check in this morning and see if its starting to ferment.  In a couple days, I’ll crank it to 68F to drive it to finish dry.

I am going to dry hop this with some whole leaf cascade. I might do this in primary to save time; compared to doing it in the keg like I planned.  We’ll see…

Recipe to follow soon (and maybe a fermentor pic).
BREW ON!

I bottled the Belgian White Beer that I brew up a couple of weeks ago last night.  Here are the good notes from the session.

• I hit my targeted final gravity: 1.010
• The weird off flavor that plagued my other Wit wasn’t present at bottling
• The orange zest flavor is present in this beer
• The color looked good, which was another issue with the other beer

We’ll see how it comes out, but the orange zest flavor could be too much.  I don’t know.  Mike will probably like it.

When I was moving some stuff around, I noticed I still had a bottle of the old beer in the fridge.  It must have survived the great purge I had a month ago.  It will be interesting to compare  the new one with the old one and see how much I improved things.

Brewed up this version of Northern English Brown Ale in Feb 16, 2012.  Goal was to get something a little lighter in color with more toasty and caramel notes.  Also wanted to have that solid Nut Brown breadiness in there.  I think it worked out great, here it is:

12.5# Pale Malt (US)
1.0#Crystal 60L
0.5# Pale Chocolate Malt (200L)
0.25# Chocolate Malt (400L)
2.0 oz East Kent Goldings (5%AA)
S-04 Fermentis English Ale Yeast

This was for 7.5 gallons in the kettle post boil.
OG 1052
FG 1018 (little high due to yeast issues, not recipe)
IBUs 24
SRM 19
ABV ~4.5%

This recipe came out spot on in color.  The toffee aroma is amazing.  I might re-tweek this one more time and split the crystal between some 60L and 40L…we’ll see.  Its drinking really nice as it is.  I’ve been getting into keeping my grain bills pretty simple and straightforward and it shows in the results of this beer.