Welcome to Our Quest for Beer Nirvana

We are homebrewers, beer hunters, and true food revolutionists, and this blog will be a concoction of all three subjects. We began our homebrew journey in fall 2009, armed with a Gold Complete beer equipment kit, True Brew Double IPA extract kit, and a copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. We brewed many tasty beers on our stove top (well the Holiday Cheer is still aging, don't guesstimate with ginger), but by spring 2010 we had All-Grain fever. After our eighth all-grain batch, the arduous question of "what's next" was broached, so we picked up Brewing Classic Styles for some inspiration and decided to brew through the book. Our beer version of Julie & Julia commences!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Helles Yes!

This "brew through" adventure begins with the BJCP Category 1-Light Lager. I'm an ale girl to the core but can appreciate a good lager, although the light part was a bit discouraging. Luckily, the Light Lager category has a wide range of of substyles, ranging from the low-calorie, light-flavored light American lager to the rich, flavorful, but balanced Dortmunder export style. This round we are going to take on Jamil's Munchen Grobes Bier from Brewing Classic Styles.

"A Munich Helles is a clean, malt focused German lager with a gentle, bready malt character. This is a smooth, easy-drinking beer ofter consumed by the liter. There are two key things to keep in mind when brewing any German lager: the right ingredients and a good, clean fementation with the proper level of attentuation." Brewing Classic Styles

Ingredients

Malt
Pilsner Malt (Belgian)
Munich Malt
Melanoidin
Hops
Hallertau
Yeast
Wyeast 2308-Munich Lager

Strike

Heat wave! Brewed our first lager and temperatures surpassed the 90 degree mark, thinking some of our targets may be off. Heated 2 gallons of distilled water and 1.7 gallons of tap water to 166 degrees. Added 2 g. of gypsum and 2 g. calcium chloride to the mash (only have 18 g. of calcium in our water). Target mash temperature was 150 but averaged 155 (probably something to do with the sweltering conditions) Mashed for 60 minutes.

Sparge

Three gallons of distilled and 6.2 gallons of tap was heated to 170 degrees and 3 g. gypsum and 3 g. calcium chloride added. Introduced the sparge arm to brew day so interested to see how our efficiency compares to batch sparging.





Boil

Pulled 10 gallons of wort @ 1.038. Brew Pal said 1.039 @ 10 gallons, so right on. Boiled for 90 minutes. Starting gravity was 1.047 and it was calculated 1.049 @ 8 gallons so we must be doing something right.




Fermentation

Recommended yeast pitching temperature is 45-55 degrees. Pulled 5.5 gallons into a cooling vessel (5 gallon Better Bottle) and placed into fermenter @ 48 degrees for 15 hours. Racked to a 6.5 gallon carboy and pitched 2 liter/2 packs of #2308 based on Mr. Malty calculations. Fermented @ 50 degrees for four days, followed by a diacetyl rest @ 60 degrees for two days.





Lagering

Racked to a 5 gallon keg and lagered @ 35 degrees. Only 8 more weeks to go!
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)