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.

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
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.

The Brew Dudes have brewed a number of American Pale Ales (APAs) over the years and we have listed the recipes on this post. Take a look at the different ways we approached this style. APAs in general should use American base malt, some specialty grains to give the beer some body and extra flavor, and American hops – particularly the big citrus-y ones that we have come to know and love. You could other US hop varieties but they won’t do well in competition. Not that Brew Dude John knows anything about that.

April 3 2012 Update:

Here is the latest Pale Ale from me.  The focus here is smooth bittering, solid classic centennial flavor and aroma, with a big boost of cascade aroma via dry hopping.

10lbs American 2-row (great western)
3lbs German Munich (1oL)
0.5lb Breiss Victory Malt
0.5lb Crystal 40L
1 oz Warrior 14.7%AA 60min
0.5 oz Centennial 11%AA 10min
0.5 oz Centennial 11%AA 0min
2 oz Cascade 5.7%AA Dry Hop 4days (whole leaf)
2pkg US-05 American Ale from Fermentis (dry)

Mash 152F
Ferment started at 62F, 3days in ramp to 65F, 5 days in ramp to 68F and hold.

March 11 2009 Update:

I was thinking my first all grain brew should be a variation of the APA I brewed last year for the LongShot Competition.

I made some adjustments and decided to post the new version of the American Pale Ale recipe.   These adjustments are based on not only to suit an all grain process, but also based on notes I received from the judges:

10 lbs American 2-row malt
2 oz. Special B Malt
5 oz. Honey Malt
5 oz. American Victory Malt
.5 oz Yakima Magnum Pellet Hops boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Glacier Plugs boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Glacier Plugs boiled 30 min.
.5 oz. Glacier Plugs boiled 15 min.
.5 oz. Glacier Plugs boiled 1 min.
Yeast: White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Mash at 152 degrees for 60 minutes. Make yeast starter. Ferment for 2 weeks.

Basically trying to improve on what I feel is a good recipe. Attempting to get a bit hoppier with this one. Staying with a clean yeast strain, but going back to the tried and true 001.

I have Mike on tap to document the first all grain. Should be something…

Here is my original partial mash version of this recipe:

4 lbs. 4 oz. American 2-row
2 oz. American Caramel 60°L
4 oz. American Victory
3 oz. Honey Malt
3 oz. Special B Malt
3.5 lbs. Dry Extra Light Extract
.5 oz. Cluster (Pellets, 5.50 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 30 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 15 min.
.5 oz. Glacier (Plugs, 7.0 %AA) boiled 1 min.
Yeast: White Labs WLP051 California Ale V Yeast

Original Gravity: 1.054
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 8.51 °SRM
Bitterness: 37.5 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.50%

If you look closely at the ingredients list, you will see that I have profiled many of them in recent posts. I may need to alter some of the ingredients if I can’t get them.

I will be following a partial mash procedure for this recipe. Here is my brew log for this beer:

American Pale Ale Preparations

Checking On The Hops

Checking On The Grains

APA Brew Day

Last night I was able to squeeze in my scheduled March brew session.  This was a bit of a relief as I’ve been aiming to brew every third thursday or friday night of each month. (The wife actually challenged me to do this, can you believe it?)

Regardless, last night was an amazingly smooth session.  After four batches down with my new equipment set up things are really starting to roll.  My entire session was done in 4.5 hours, with not prior set-up prep!  I usually try and get setup the night before, but no luck with that this time.  I went into the garage at 6:00PM and was walking out around 10:30.  I couldn’t believe it.

I hope to profile my newly designed set up in upcoming posts.

Anyhow, my last four brews had been malt forward or lighter fare type beers.  I am not a hop-heady guy, but I do on occasion crave a pint of something hoppy.  Not to mention my wife loves hop forward beers.  So if I am going to keep the monthly brew session alive I need to toss in a hoppy beer a couple times.

I was shooting for a 1054 OG and hit it at 1052.  It was actually sort of tough because after the mash I had 7.25 gallons of 1054 wort in the kettle.  So I had to add a gallon of water to the kettle prior to boiling to not end up with 1.065 beer.  1.065 wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but I didn’t have the hops to really make this an IPA.  I need to go back into my notes but I think my system is more efficient that I planned.  Which is fine, I just need to start pulling my recipes back a little bit to account for it.

I pitched two packets of dry US05 Ale yeast, and oxygenated for almost 2 minutes.  I pitched at 62F and set the fermwrap for 64F. I need to go out and check in this morning and see if its starting to ferment.  In a couple days, I’ll crank it to 68F to drive it to finish dry.

I am going to dry hop this with some whole leaf cascade. I might do this in primary to save time; compared to doing it in the keg like I planned.  We’ll see…

Recipe to follow soon (and maybe a fermentor pic).
BREW ON!

I bottled the Belgian White Beer that I brew up a couple of weeks ago last night.  Here are the good notes from the session.

• I hit my targeted final gravity: 1.010
• The weird off flavor that plagued my other Wit wasn’t present at bottling
• The orange zest flavor is present in this beer
• The color looked good, which was another issue with the other beer

We’ll see how it comes out, but the orange zest flavor could be too much.  I don’t know.  Mike will probably like it.

When I was moving some stuff around, I noticed I still had a bottle of the old beer in the fridge.  It must have survived the great purge I had a month ago.  It will be interesting to compare  the new one with the old one and see how much I improved things.

Brewed up this version of Northern English Brown Ale in Feb 16, 2012.  Goal was to get something a little lighter in color with more toasty and caramel notes.  Also wanted to have that solid Nut Brown breadiness in there.  I think it worked out great, here it is:

12.5# Pale Malt (US)
1.0#Crystal 60L
0.5# Pale Chocolate Malt (200L)
0.25# Chocolate Malt (400L)
2.0 oz East Kent Goldings (5%AA)
S-04 Fermentis English Ale Yeast

This was for 7.5 gallons in the kettle post boil.
OG 1052
FG 1018 (little high due to yeast issues, not recipe)
IBUs 24
SRM 19
ABV ~4.5%

This recipe came out spot on in color.  The toffee aroma is amazing.  I might re-tweek this one more time and split the crystal between some 60L and 40L…we’ll see.  Its drinking really nice as it is.  I’ve been getting into keeping my grain bills pretty simple and straightforward and it shows in the results of this beer.

Have you heard of Ward Labs in Nebraska?

Ward Labs is an industry leader in water testing.  Specializing in characterizing the mineral content and contamination profiles of water and soil samples for the agricultural business, they’ve expanded their business to help out Homebrewers.

When you read in How to Brew by John Palmer about all how much alkalinity, magnesium, calcium, sulfates, etc. etc. should be in your brewing water, it gets dizzying to me.  I have a decent background in chemistry, but water chemisty is a very special beast.

The cool thing about Ward Labs is that the will take a sample and quantify all the important minerals that Palmer preaches about.  I have had very little luck getting that information directly from my municipal water department.  Often municipal water departments focus on things like poisons and toxins in the water (lead and carcninogens).  Furthermore, my water department just offers a generic read out taken at one time a year.  If your water source tends to vary slightly season to season, the profile could be different.

I am pretty sure we have fairly soft water here in Northeastern Massachusetts…but how soft?

In a recent post about a bohemian pilsner recipe John hinted at our growing interest in how our brewing water looks.  That’s where Ward Labs comes in.

For a fee of $33, Ward Labs offers a Hombrewers Water Test.  They claim to return the complete analysis by 5PM the day after they receive your sample.

I think I’ll be getting the supplies together to mail out a water sample to help us get ready for our lager sessions this summer.

BREW ON!

Spring has sprung and the hops have started to shoot out of the ground.

This year is the celebrated “Year 3″ of my hop growing. All the resources that I read talked about the third year being a magical year of crop bounty. The root system should be fully formed and the bines should be primed to produce a good amount of hop flowers.

I had a good harvest last year. My goal is to get a pound of hops from this bad boy. Maybe this will be the year.

To help my efforts, I bought two more rhizomes to plant this year. If I am lucky, I will have Cascade and Willamette hops to harvest too.