brewing in maine

After a nice walk with my wife down to the Town Landing and back I made the starter for tomorrow’s brew session. Then I got to thinking the Oktoberfest might have carbonated in the last few days. I ventured down to the basement, cracked the fridge and pulled a sample off the keg. It’s a deep copper color with a soft, small-bubbled head that dies down quickly. The beer is not crystal clear like the Helles was, but it’s not too bad…first few pulls will probably have some crap in them anyway from the final racking settling out.

Swirling the glass lets loose a nose heavy on caramel. The taste is a bit sweet – probably due to underattenuation – and quite bitter with a subtle floral hop flavor. I took a look at the recipe again and my hop additions came to 36 IBU. The BJCP style guidelines for Oktoberfest/Maarzen give a range of 20-28 IBU so this is by design I guess, though it was quite a surprise after the mellow maltiness of the Helles. It has almost an IPA kind of hop flavor to it. I think it’s quite out of character and not fermented fully but it’s delicious.

I did not make a starter for this beer and I did with the Helles, a mistake I will not repeat for any beer. I really think that the most significant change I have made in the past few batches has been to begin pitching proper cell counts – the benefits to flavor profile and attenuation are just huge.

The Oktoberfest is kegged. It came in at 1.019 – not fully attenuated at all, something like 65%, which was not intentional. This was the Northern Brewer recipe, and I thought I had good temp control but I didn’t make a huge starter. That’s probably why it didn’t go as far.

The taste of the sample I pulled before racking was very bitter, potentially oxidized, but hard to tell until it’s carbonated. This thing has been in secondary since February, having lagered at 33 deg for that month but coming up to the forties for serving temp because the Helles keg was in with it. It’s been through a lot. Fingers crossed!

I did rock, paper, scissors with myself and the Tripel won out. It’s off to Maine Brewing Supply (where’s your web site content dude?) later today to pick up ingredients. I’ll be kegging the Oktoberfest tonight so it’s ready to drink by Monday’s brew session.

Recipe for Monday is Jamil’s Tripel, potentially with some changes from the BYO Allagash Tripel clone recipe:

14 lb Pilsener
2.5 lb Cane Sugar (in boil at 15 minutes remaining)
0.25 lb Aromatic malt

Mash at 149 for higher fermentability, 90 minute boil.

2.3oz (65g) Tettnanger @ 60 min. – 4% AA
0.5oz (14g) Saaz @ 15 min. – 3.5% AA

WLP530 Abbey Ale x 2 in a 1L starter for ~275 billion cells

Ferment at 68 and let rise into the 70s as things get rolling…not that I have much control over this.

Brew video to follow.

The Oktoberfest is in secondary and slowly bring dropped to lager temps. I’m feeling like this lager process takes too long. Waay too long. In the meantime, a photo from Super Bowl Sunday of the Bacon Explosion. Wow.

OK, the first real post here. Nearly two weeks ago I brewed my first lager, an Oktoberfest, which has been in the chest freezer at 50 degrees since. It took a few days to start fermenting (didn’t do a starter at all, probably should have) and looks like this now:

The recipe was cribbed from Northern Brewer’s Oktoberfest recipe and modified somewhat.

5.0 lb. Munich Malt
5.0 lb Pilsener Malt
0.5 lb Dark Munich Malt
0.5 lb CaraMunich 60
0.5 oz Millenium (15.0% AA), 60 minutes
0.5 oz Mt. Hood (5.0% AA), 0 minutes
Wyeast 2633 Oktoberfest Lager Blend smack pack

Mash Schedule:
20 minutes @ 122 degrees (Protein Rest)
60 minutes @ 153 degrees (Saccharification Rest)
15 minutes @ 168 degrees (Mash Out)
Sparged to collect about 7 gallons in the kettle.

Boiled 90 minutes, chilled with the immersion chiller, strained into the carboy and pitched the yeast.

I’ve found out in some reading that with modern malts the protein rest isn’t really necessary, so I may omit that in the future. In another week I’ll rack to secondary and do a 1-2 day diacetyl rest at room temp, then put it back in the fridge and slowly drop the temp to 33 degrees for lagering.