Clean Euro Lager Help?

[hwall95]

Hi guys,

I've been researching a range of recipe to brew for my brother's upcoming wedding in September and one I have been having trouble with due to lack of experience is a lager? I have a brewing fridge so I'm capable at keeping the temperature at lager temperatures and cold crashing.

So overall I was wondering whether anyone could help me with a recipe, so far I've got:

Batch Size: 20L (Could do 23L if the flavour won't be watery) OG: 1.048 and IBU: 32
1 x Coopers Canadian Blonde/or Coopers Heritage Lager
1kg Light Dry Malt Extract
200g of Carapils
200g of Victory Malt? - Just to add some flavour.
20g of Saaz at 20 minutes
1 or 2 packets of W34/70 Yeast at 12 degrees for 2 weeks then cold crashing for 4 weeks.

I was thinking to go with a kit for this brew mainly since I assumed it may be harder to get an extract recipe to get the right profile.. However I assuming the kits are probably mashed correctly for the style therefore its most likely to create an overall better beer then extract along. If I had the time and right sized pot I would do an all grain batch, but currently I'm fairly busy with Uni.. So I'm hoping to get this brewing this weekend so I can have it bottled and tasting great by September.

Also was wondering whether I should use 500g of LDME and then 500g dextrose to producer a lighter bodied beer?

Cheers guys,
Harry

 

[menoetes]

Hi Hwall95,

It's great to see you're making your brother a bunch of beer for his wedding, I wish my family would be considerate! You recipe looks good, using malt, hops and specialty grains to get the most out of the kit. There's nothing at-all wrong with it on the whole as far as taste will go but as it stands it won't technically it isn't quite a lager as most people know it.

Two things jump out at me, the IBUs and the victory malt. Most lagers won't get much above 25 IBU's at the most (some few do but 'the exception to the rule...' etc). You can fix this by dropping the length that you boil your hops for to 10 minutes or even splitting the hop addition of 10 minutes and 0 minutes (flameout). Your hop choice is solid though.

The victory malt seems a bit out of place to me too. I could be very wrong here and am happy to be corrected but I worry it might add some colour and a nutty biscuit taste to your lager with doesn't seem fitting with the style of beer. However the Carapils is a dead on choice for Lagers and your completely on base with that.

As for the rest of it, you're looking good. Using the kilo of dry malt IMHO though add dextrose too is you want to up the % of alcohol. Two weeks fermenting and 4 weeks cold crashing (otherwise known as 'lagering' over such long periods) will clean up the appearance and crisp flavour of your beer a treat. Read up on Diacetyl Rest too if you don't mind adding another step to help your beer out too.

Otherwise fire away! Do as you like, I think experimenting is one of the best parts of home brewing and let us know how it turns out in the end. You might be onto a winner

 

[booargy]

yeast pitch 4 packets of W34/70 @ 10c ferment at 12c

 

[hwall95]

Yeah my aim is to make a clean lager that those who generally drink XXXX will enjoy but also people that prefer non-commercial beer will also enjoy.

Two things jump out at me, the IBUs and the victory malt. Most lagers won't get much above 25 IBU's at the most (some few do but 'the exception to the rule...' etc). You can fix this by dropping the length that you boil your hops for to 10 minutes or even splitting the hop addition of 10 minutes and 0 minutes (flameout). Your hop choice is solid though.

The victory malt seems a bit out of place to me too. I could be very wrong here and am happy to be corrected but I worry it might add some colour and a nutty biscuit taste to your lager with doesn't seem fitting with the style of beer. However the Carapils is a dead on choice for Lagers and your completely on base with that.

As for the rest of it, you're looking good. Using the kilo of dry malt IMHO though add dextrose too is you want to up the % of alcohol. Two weeks fermenting and 4 weeks cold crashing (otherwise known as 'lagering' over such long periods) will clean up the appearance and crisp flavour of your beer a treat. Read up on Diacetyl Rest too if you don't mind adding another step to help your beer out too.

Yeah I just realised the high IBU was because I dropped the batch to 20L, so I've increased it 23L which has given be an IBU at 24 with a 20g Saaz addition at 10 minutes.

Okay I'll drop the victory and keep the carapils - although I might experiment with the victory in the future to see how it goes. Okay awesome, Ill keep with the straight LDME and yeah I will do a diacetly rest probably after day 10 to ensure its finished and to let the yeast clean the beer up.

yeast pitch 4 packets of W34/70 @ 10c ferment at 12c

Okay thanks for the advice, but is there any exact reason for the large amount yeast? As I know generally the rule is double the amount of yeast for a lager in comparison to ale, but generally for an ale you would only need one packet for an OG of 1.041, so out of curosity is this general for most lager yeast or just this one in particular?

Edit: Overall Recipe:

Batch Size: 23L OG: 1.041 FG: 1.01 ABV: 4.3% IBU: 24
1 x Coopers Heritage Lager
1kg Light Dry Malt Extract
200g of Carapils
20g of Saaz at 10 minutes
4 packets of W34/70 Yeast
Method:
Steep carapils at 65-68C for 30 minutes
Boil Hops for 10 minutes at a gravity of 1.040 in around 5L (Add LDME to increase gravity)
Warm up coopers tin to ease transfer and add to wort, cool to 10 degrees
Pitch rehydrated yeast
Ferment at 12 degrees for 10 days, then raise to 18 degrees for d-rest for 4 days.
Switch vessels and cold crash for 4 weeks
Then bottle

Cheers guys for the advice, really appreciate it.

 

[hwall95]

Put this down tonight. Quick brew all up as I had mates waiting for me to finish, however I found using pre-cooled water was a great method to get the wort to pitching rate. Overall OG was 1.041 as predicted by Ian's Spreadsheet,and ferment temp will be 12 degrees C for 2 weeks (assuming it finishes) then 4 weeks cold crash. Will let you know how it turns out. Cheers guys.

 

[wynnum1]

What water did you use tap water with chemicals . I use tank water so have to boil all the water.

 

[menoetes]

You method looks good and I use pre-cooled water too It is great for rapidly cooling off the wort and getting it all down to pitching temp.

All in all I think you have a good looking lager there.

 

[hwall95]

What water did you use tap water with chemicals . I use tank water so have to boil all the water.

Yeah I just used tap water, didn't play around with any of the water chemistry either; will do that at later when I make my journey to all-grain.

You method looks good and I use pre-cooled water too It is great for rapidly cooling off the wort and getting it all down to pitching temp.

All in all I think you have a good looking lager there.

Yeah I hope it turns out well. Yeah think I'll use the pre-cooled water in the future as I saves at look of time and ice. Thanks for your help one again

 

[booargy]

I can't really explain why it is better to pitch more yeast. But I know that to get a clean lager you don't want the slops from a yeast orgy in your beer. So you pitch a shit load of yeast cold so there is enough in there to do the job without having to build the numbers first. keep it nice and cool so they not be sweating while they work. There are other reasons but I think it is the main one.

 

[Vini2ton]

I can't really explain why it is better to pitch more yeast. But I know that to get a clean lager you don't want the slops from a yeast orgy in your beer. So you pitch a shit load of yeast cold so there is enough in there to do the job without having to build the numbers first. keep it nice and cool so they not be sweating while they work. There are other reasons but I think it is the main one.

Mmmmm. Yeast sweat...Glaaarrr.

 

[hwall95]

Checked this yesterday and the gravity was sitting on 1.012, so only two more points to achieve the predicted gravity. So I might change to temp to 18-20 and do a diacetyl rest to make sure it doesn't get stuck and to lower the diactyl. Taste-wise it tasted really nice; clean and malty. Although it did kinda have a honeycomb flavour so I don't know where that's coming from, maybe diacetyl?

 

[hwall95]

I transferred this to secondary for lagering today (for 3-4 weeks) after consistent reading at 1.010 as predicted. Tasted really good so hopefully it will turn out really nice. As an experiment I bottled one bottle to see the taste difference due to lagering. Will repost how it turns out in a couple of months

 

[hwall95]

For anyone who's interested, this turned out great! Nice easy drinking malty lager. If it didn't take up the fridge space for so long I would probably throw another down so I could drink some as it's quite malty for a relatively light beer (compared to my other beers).

 

[menoetes]

I'm glad to hear it turned out well sir, malty you say? Sounds like a dutch lager. How long did you cold condition (crash) it for?

...and how long in the bottle?

 

[hwall95]

Yeah the it has a nice malty taste. It's similar to a Vienna lager I had one time when I was out for dinner, but not as strong. I think I ended up cold crashing it for 4 weeks and currently it's just over 4 weeks old in the bottle.

 

[menoetes]

Cool, hows it smell? My only two lagers so far have had a bit of a sulfurous nose on them until I had left them in the bottle for about 8 weeks but were gorgeous after that. By the time your brothers wedding comes around it'll be a delicious gift... if there's any left at that point

 

[hwall95]

It smelt fairly malty from memory, but I can't remember any sulphur aromas (sulphuric = farts aroma right?). Yeah I've had to restrict myself and my mates who I brew with from drinking it, as I want to save most of it until then (5-6 weeks to go). However if you're close-by (Indooroopilly, Brisbane) I'm happy to give you a bottle if you'd like? It'd also be interesting to get another brewers honest I opinion on it as well.

 

[menoetes]

I'm not far away from you at all, sir. I've PMed you.