What Hops For Vienna Lager?

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deebee

The Bludgeon Brewery
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With my new frig I am planning on making a Vienna lager and using Palmers recipe as a guide. He suggests Liberty hops. Any other suggestions for suitable hops? Any other good partial mash recipes?

I will be using WLP838 Southern German lager yeast.
 
I made that exact recipe early on in my brewing career, Deebee. It was a beautiful beer at the time and It was the one that convinced me to invest in the equipment and knowledge for partial and full mashing. I used the Wyeast Bohemian Lager yeast. Having said that, I I were to make it again, I would use all German noble hops for bittering and flavour. Probably Hallertau and hersbrucker.

Cheers - Snow
 
For hops I would use German noble, and my preference is for Tettnanger. Vienna is a lightly bittered beer so you will not have the problem of having to use large amounts of low alpha nobles. I would also suggest that you just use a single addition at 60mins for bittering and no flavour or aroma additions. Just let the vienna malt shine through.

deebee said:
With my new frig I am planning on making a Vienna lager and using Palmers recipe as a guide.

I reckon you can do better than Palmer's recipe for a Vienna. There was a Grumpy's discussion on his recipes a while ago and Palmer actually responded. In relation to criticisms of his Vienna recipe not being to style he replied:

"I would like to explain why my Vienna recipe does not meet the BJCP guideline for Vienna Lager. It is a Graf-style Vienna, as explained in George and Laurie Fix's Classic Beer Styles book: Vienna, Marzen, Oktoberfest. this variation of the style was created to counter the higher alkalinity water of Texas and Northern Mexico. Thus the addition of dark malt."

and

"Maybe I should clarify in the next edition that my recipes don't necessarily meet the current style guidelines. (but as folks noted, they do make good beer)."

Cheers
MAH
 
Liberty hops can be substituted with Mt Hood, Crystal or Hallertau.

Fix mentions Saaz or Styrian Goldings for aroma, or the Tettnang/Hallertau already suggested

Jovial Monk
 
Thanks for the responses. I will probably go for Tettnanger or Hallertau.

I am guessing at this stage I will use 2kg of JW Trad, about 250-500g of crystal/cararoma, possibly some roast barley and 1.5kg of DME.

MAH, yes I read that post again while doing a search on this beer yesterday. The other questions I have about Palmer's recipe are that he suggests a multi-rest infusion and I am only doing a single temperature, probably aimed high. That should be fine huh?

Also can I use roast barley as a substitute for black patent malt. It will probably be about 50-100g just for colour and would save me a trip to the HBS. I have never seen black patent malt at my shop. Any substitutes?

...and can anyone point to other good vienna lager recipes?
 
Single infusion is fine.

You can substitute roast for black if it is just for colour additions. I am surprised your HBS does not stock black malt.
Cara-aroma is a dark crystal & I would not recommend it in that quantity
for a Vienna. In fact going by the proportions you've give (6-10% Caraaroma) plus a few % roast, you are going to end up with a
very dark brown very caramelly sweet lager. Not a Vienna at all.

If you _have_ to use Cara-aroma use only 100g and not add any roast barley.

I'd prefer a light crystal - like CaraRed, or CaraMunich I.
If you can replace the JW ale malt with Weyermann Munich II
you would get a much much closer profile.
 
Thanks for the tips brad. The JW is in the recipe because it's in the cupboard as with the cararoma and roast barley. I have some lighter crystal and will go half-half and perhaps drop the roast barley
 
Good Day
If you can add 100 - 200 gms of melanoidan it will help to give a malty "decoction"
flavour.
 

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