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!