In the last few weeks of the year, I have been busy brewing. The black lager that I brewed two weeks ago was ready to be racked. Once it was racked to a secondary vessel, that wonderful yeast cake could be used for my Vienna Lager.

This is the second time I am brewing this recipe, as I had mentioned in the video on the tasting post.

I like the style and I have a chance to enter it into a national competition so I have two good reasons to brew it again.

After ten inches of snow, the session was delayed an hour or two while I shoveled out our cars and stairs. I thought ahead and put a shovel near the back door where I brew so I could quickly clear out some space and get my kettle going.

The snow started to melt away as the burner was heating up my wort. Soon I had another problem, which was a large puddle of water. Using the shovel, I moved most of the water out of the way so I wasn’t constantly splashing around while I was getting ingredients, putting the chiller into the kettle, adjusting the propane, etc.

Overall, this brew session was successful. I felt like I was able to hit and maintain my mash temperature. There were no boil overs, no malfunctions with the equipment, no mistakes during the boil.

The only miscalculation I had was the temperature of the wort when I racked it out of the kettle and into my fermentor. Although my thermometer said it was between 40° and 50° F, the thermometer strip on the carboy said it was more like 55° F. It wasn’t a total disaster but it could have been avoided with some further investigation into the temperature.

Now the Vienna lager is fermenting nicely. The black lager has been moved to another fridge (my brother’s) for a few weeks while this beer sits at 50°F in mine.

It’s going to be a lager-y spring.

Brew On