Enhancements To Esb Bavarian Lager?

[SpaceMonkey]

I'm about to lay down my second batch of ESB Bavarian Lager (the 3kg tin) and was wondering if there are any simple tweaks that I can give it to enhance it a little.
The last one came out fantastic, but was perhaps just a little on the light side. I made it up to 22.5L as per the recipe and steeped then strained a bag of light grain which my local HBS gave me with the kit into the wort. It came out at 4.22% ABV with a very nice head and good carbonation.
I was thinking I'd like the get the next one up into 5-5.5% alcohol range if possible without messing with the flavour too much, although a little extra malt would be ok. I was planning on making this one up to 20L, would that do the trick or is there anything else (some LME perhaps?) which will push it in the direction I'm looking for?

 

[Mothballs]

I have one of these in the keg at the moment it is about 4 weeks old and is great drinking. I made a few additions to the kit.

I steeped 200g carapils and 50g med crystal for 20 mins. Strained the liquid off the grain and rinsed with a little more hot water. brought this liquid to the boil and added 15g hallertau pellets for 5-10 min boil. Added this to kit and made up to 22lt. Fermented at 10 deg C with saflager 34/70.

Starting gravity was 1042 and finishing gravity was 1011. So it ended up being around 4.3%. You could reduce the volume as you planned to 20lt with no problems.

:beer:
mothballs

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Sounds very similar to my first brew, your SG and FG were almost identical to mine. Might have to give the hops a go this time, I'll prolly just use the same grain as last time though (my HBS is still giving it away with the ESB kits).

 

[GMK]

i like what mothballs does...

Some extra info - could try substituting Dark munich or munich instead of cara pils.
Also dry hop with saaz or hallertae in the secondary...

Hope this helps

Ken...

 

[SpaceMonkey]

i like what mothballs does...

Some extra info - could try substituting Dark munich or munich instead of cara pils.
Also dry hop with saaz or hallertae in the secondary...

Hope this helps

Ken...

[post="79865"][/post]​

Only got the one fermenter at the moment so the secondary isn't really an option, but I'll definitely give the extra hops a go I reckon as per mothballs reccomendation.

 

[user 384]

Well I'm going to go completely against GMK and recommend that you never ever under any circumstances dry hop a lager. I can't think of any lager I've drunk that is dry hopped except for homebrew. It's just not the norm for a lager. The flavour of dry hopping is very different to what you get from boiling hops. Dry hopping is much more raw flavoured, more coarse. It's fine in a number of different ales like an APA where the robustness of the flavours complement the flavour whack you get from dry hopping, but has no place in the more delicate styles like a lager.

Now it's personal preference of what you do with your beers, but why make a lager, why aim for a delicate and crisp style of beer, then cover it up with dry hopping?

Cheers
MAH

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Well I nipped into the HBS near where I work at lunchtime and grabbed a 12g "tea bag" of Hallertau, should this do the trick?

 

[Kai]

i like what mothballs does...

Some extra info - could try substituting Dark munich or munich instead of cara pils.
Also dry hop with saaz or hallertae in the secondary...

Hope this helps

Ken...

[post="79865"][/post]​

As well as what MAH has said, you know that munich needs to be mashed, ken?

 

[Stoodoo]

I'll be starting up a ESB 3kg lager kit in the next few days. I'll be using ~ 5lt tap water heated up to ~68c ish, then drop ~200-250gms each of some weyermann carapils and pilsner cracked grain, steeped for a while. After steeping I'll add a couple of Saaz hop plugs to the boil for 15mins or so, at the end of the boil I'll throw in another couple Saaz hop plugs. Drop the "fresh" home made wort mix inot the fermentor with the 3kg kit, add 10 lt of filtered water into the fermentor, and finally add my stored Budvar liquid lager yeast to the mix. Hopefully it will turn out pretty teasty. I've made a couple of the fresh wort lager kits from ESB, one with Budvar yeast ( :chug: :chug: :chug: ), and the other (in primary fermentation atm) with an American Liquid Lager yeast.

Cheers

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Check the wort from my 20L brew tonight and she's about ready for the bottle I think, ABV is up to 5.3% at 1010 so I think the reduced volume has done the job nicely in boosting the strength to what I wanted. It's tasting pretty good too, despite the hot weather on the weekend having pushed the temperature up a bit further than I'dve ideally liked (20-22c).