October is for lagers, at least that’s what we say. To fill our fridge without much thought, I bought a kit from boomchugalug.com. This video is about their Roll Out the Barrel Oktoberfest Lager recipe kit. It has the qualities of a Festbier and we really enjoyed it.
Recipe Details With My Alterations
The kit provided me with the grain bill that I wanted but I made adjustments to the hops, yeast, mash time, and boil time. If you buy this kit, you’ll see the differences. This following recipe is for a US 5 gallon batch.
Ingredients
4.7 pounds (2.1 kg) Pilsner Malt (47% of grain bill)
3.2 pounds (3.2 kg) Vienna Malt (32% of grain bill)
1.6 pounds (.73 kg) of Light Munich Malt (16% of grain bill)
.5 pounds (227 g) of CaraHell Malt (5% of grain mill)
.25 ounce (7 g) of Polaris hops (21.8% AA) – 60 minutes left to go in the boil
1 ounce (28 g) of Hallertaur hops (3.2% AA)- 20 minutes left to go in the boil
1 ounce (28 g) of US Tettnang hops (5.7% AA) – Added at Flame out
2 packets of Lallemand German Diamond Lager Yeast
Instructions
Used 9 US gallons of spring water I bought from the store and treated it with 4 grams of CaCl. Mashed for 90 minutes with 4 gallons of water at 150° F (66° C). Sparged with 5 gallons to collect 7 gallons of wort in the kettle.
Boiled for 90 minutes. Chilled to 54° F (12° C) and pitched yeast straight from the packets. Fermented for three weeks at 54° F (12° C) then gradually chilled to near freezing temperatures. Transferred to keg and forced carbonated. Added Lagering is happening right now in the keg!
Festbier Tasting Notes
Mike and I really liked this beer. It fermented nicely, which led to a super drinkable beer. The color was gold with a nice lacey white head.
It finished dry and was very refreshing. If I learned something from this beer, it was importance of good bittering. The small amount of Polaris hops boiled for 60 minutes is what my German Pils needed.
I was glad I picked up this kit. It turned out really well and I would gladly brew this beer again.
BREW ON!
Idar Hoydal
Festbeer recipe. You can easily get lost in the weeds with this beer, everybody is all over the place with Munich, Vienna and Victory malt, and of course, everybody have the best recipe. Go and figure.
I just have a simple question since I want the beer to have a bout 5 SRM, no more.
My grain bill would look like this, because I don’t want it more than 5.5+% ABV.
9 lb Pilsner Malt, 1.5 lb Munich Malt and 0.5 lb Vienna Malt. My question is. will that produce an easily drinkable beer, or should I swap the Vienna and Munich Malt, 1.5lb Vienna and 0.5 lb Munich Malt. Any other suggestions you have would be appreciated.
John
Hi Idar – yes, that grain will create a very drinkable beer. I don’t think the swapping of the Munich and Vienna will change the beer too much. The Pilsner malt is what will be driving the drinkability. Pair this grain bill with a clean lager yeast and you will have a great beer.