Tasting My Small Batch Lager

Does anyone remember that small one gallon dark lager I brewed up back in January? If not you can find that video post here.

This week we finally get around to giving it a taste. To be fair, John has been ready to taste if for over a month. Encouraging me to get that beer in some bottles and get it on camera. I finally racked that little guy into a keg instead, put it under some high pressure overnight and this video is all about our initial impressions.

This beer wasn’t too bad. Despite it sitting on the yeast cake for over a month, no controlled temperature settings, no true lager phase, no attention to pitching rate, no real love for two months! There were two pretty interesting results from this little experiment:

First:
This beer was 90+% Pilsner malt. As part of a totally uncontrolled experiment I shortened my boil time to 30 minutes. Heresy! Normally we all believe that pilsner malt based worts need an long boil time to help drive off DMS. This beer had very little detectable DMS. That could be due to a couple things. The small boil volume geometry was such that the surface area was greater than the depth of the beer. So there was plenty of volitalization opportunity. The beer also sat on the yeast for quite some time. Perhaps that lager yeast cake was able to slowly work through some of that DMS if there was any there at all.

Second:
Also related to the shorter boil time is how we perceived the hops. I used only Warrior hops. But the shortened boil length probably balanced the bitterness with some hop flavor. You never really see Warrior alone in a recipe let alone any later than the first hop charge in the recipe. Warrior is known as a “clean” bittering hop. There was a distinct hop flavor in this beer that accompanied a noticeable bittering quality. The flavor was somewhere between a mild mint and an under ripe green melon (not really fruity, but refreshing and green tasting). I sort of liked the flavor and it might be fun to play with that flavor again. Now that I think of it, using Warrior as a bittering charge then a late addition at flame out in a Saison might be interesting.

So the small batch brewing was convenient and fast. Seeing as I didn’t give it much attention I can’t really complain about the flavor profile. However, my 3/4 gallon batch doesn’t leave much room for tasting, aging or lagering after the fact.
That said, if our winter doesn’t break here soon in the Northeast; I might be right back at the small batch one more time.

Do you have any thoughts on this experiment? The DMS/Pilsner v. boil time debate? Ever tried Warrior all on its own or as an aroma hop? Drop us a comment either here or on the YouTube channel.

BREW ON!