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Vienna Lager Recipe

This recipe may be the second one I brew for the Master of Lagers series. I pulled this recipe together from looking at different sources to see what other homebrewers used to get the Vienna malt flavor in their beers. Here is my take on a Vienna Lager recipe.

** Won first place at the 2013 NERHBC and second place at the Boston Homebrew Competition **

Recipe Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Boil Size: 6.5 Gallons
Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Mash Efficiency: 72%

Ingredients

7.5 lbs Vienna Malt
1 lbs Munich Malt
1 lbs Pilsner Malt
2 oz Weyermann Carafa II Malt
1.0 oz Hallertau Pellets 4.5% AA boiled 60 mins.
0.5 oz Hallertau Pellets 4.5% AA boiled 10 mins.
Yeast: White Labs WLP838 Southern German Lager or White Labs WLP830 German Lager

Predictions

Original Gravity: 1.048
Terminal Gravity: 1.011
Color: 13.5 °SRM
Bitterness: 24 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume) 4.8%

Notes
Mash at 152°F for 60 minutes.  Again, making a big yeast starter will be important to get this beer to be dry like the style guide calls for. I would plan to ferment this beer at 50° F for at least two weeks. If I make my final gravity, I will turn down the temperature probe that’s hooked up to the fridge to just above freezing and then let it lager for a month.

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6 Comments

  1. Victor

    Hi John,

    I am going to try a 3 gallon batch of this recipe (lack of 5 gal carboy and boiler). So, would I just use the following recipe? (Recipe * 0.6)

    4.5Lb vienna Malt
    0.6Lb Munich Malt
    0.6Lb Pilsner Malt
    1.2 oz Weyermann Carafa II Malt

    0.6 oz Hallertau (60 min)
    0.3 oz Hallertau (30 min)

    Also, how many quarts per pound of grain would I have to use for mashing at 152F?

    Thank you for your time.

    Victor

  2. Hi Victor,

    Yep, this recipe should work for you if your final volume is 3 gallons. I calculated that you will probably need to start off with a 4.5 gallon volume for the boil.

    If your carboy has a 3 gallon capacity, you will probably need a blowoff tube to deal with the foam and the CO2 from the fermentation.

  3. Victor

    Thank you, John. I am going to brew this weekend. I will let you know if I have any questions or how the beer comes out in a few weeks 🙂 thank you again for your time.

  4. Great news. Brew on.

  5. Sean

    What is the water profile for something like this? I usually build my water profile up from distilled water.

  6. Hi Sean – When I brewed this beer, I didn’t know that much about water chemistry and used spring water. If I were using distilled today, I would use a calculator to figure out how much Calcium Chloride to add to my water to get to 50 ppm of Calcium. I’d keep it simple.

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