All Grain Recipe: #15 Munich Madness Oktoberfest Ale

I recently brewed up a Mr. Beer Oktoberfest Vienna Lager kit, batch #9. Like all Mr. Beer kits, this isn't a true to style beer, but rather a hybrid of Oktoberfest and Vienna Lager brewed with an ale yeast. I brewed it with a Nottingham ale yeast, a quarter lb. of Crystal 15, 1.5 lbs. of DME and 6 oz. of Booster. It turned out really great, even though it has only had two weeks to carb/condition, and has me itching to do a non-kit version of the same style.

The biggest difference between Vienna Lager and Oktoberfest is that an Oktoberfest generally has a Crystal malt presence and more hope character. Another obvious difference is that commercial examples of Vienna Lager are very difficult to find. Negra Modelo is a good example that I enjoy, and Trader Joe's sells a decent one that is brewed by Gordon Biersche. 

In contrast, Oktoberfest is a German lager and is brewed by several German breweries, including Spaten, Paulaner and Ayinger. Oktoberfest lagers were brewed in March ('Marzen') for consumption during festivals in the fall ('Oktoberfest'). 

Whichever way you go, you'll get a clean, malty, dry beer with a focus on malt and a roasted flavor. It goes down easy with a dry finish that makes you want to drink more. I find this style to be the most refreshing of the 'darker' beers one can find.

My main problem is that brewing lagers is a pain in the ass - one that I don't find to be worth it. Why invest in a brewing refrigerator and spend 2-3 months lagering your beer when you can get something that tastes just as good or better by using an ale yeast? True, it might not be true to style, so you may not want to enter it into a competition, but the end product will be just as drinkable.

Below is the Oktoberfest recipe I plan to use from Brewing Classic Styles. The original recipe is for 6 gallons at 70% efficiency, but I've scaled it to 3 gallons at 85% efficiency. The hops are tweaked slightly based on advice in Designing Great Beers, which says to use 0.75 oz of flavor hops and target an IBU to Gravity ratio of around 0.5. I'm also trying to get rid of around 40 grams of Hallertau I have in the freezer.

Finally, I substituted the WLP029 Kolsch ale yeast instead of using the WLP820 Marzen yeast. The WLP029 is supposed to give a clean, lager-like flavor that works well in this style. It supposedly creates a bit of sulfur early on, which goes away with aging. I'll be fermenting lower than normal, around 65 if I can, but I'd like to avoid getting too much diacetyl in the end product.

Below is the BeerSmith brewsheet for the recipe scaled to my equipment and efficiency, followed by the original 6 gallon recipe.

Recipe: #14 English Apple Ale (or Graff, if you prefer)

There's this great little brew pub in Anchorage called Moose's Tooth. I visit it at least once every time I'm visiting family in Alaska. Back before I was a beer geek, I loved their Apple Ale, and would drink 3 pints of it and get completely messed up. It wasn't a cider, but it had a great apple flavor balanced with a decent body, residual sweetness and malt flavor.

That beer stuck with me so much that it was the first thing I thought of when I started brewing. I knew that someday I would make a delicious apple ale. Well, I had no idea I would progress so fast. In the mean time I've learned to appreciate dozens of different beer styles, become a hop head and moved onto all grain brewing.

That doesn't mean I left behind my 'dream' of brewing an apple ale. This type of fruit beer is really rare. Seriously, try searching for advice on brewing an apple beer. I'll wait.

...

Back yet? You either found a bunch of terrible recipes that are more like a cider than a beer, a bunch of advice on making fruit beers with everything BUT apple, or you found this thread. Can you tell me what the SG of apple juice is, or what the best apple juice to use is? Hop levels? Beer style (please, not an American Wheat with apple flavor added)? The Graff thread is probably the single best resource for making an apple beer, if you can stand to read all of it. It is a great starting point, though.

So, it took me a while to craft what I thought would be the right balance. Most 'graff'' recipes are ciders with a slight bit of malt - I didn't want that. This needed to be a beer drinker's beer that just happened to also taste like apple. I knew I'd want lots of apple flavor, so I had to use at least a gallon of juice. However, I knew I'd want some residual sweetness, body and lots of malt flavor, which apple just wouldn't give me. To counteract the dryness of the juice, I went with lots of crystal malt, a little CaraPils, and the WLP002 English Ale, which leaves residual sugar and gives a good ester profile.

Perhaps most importantly, I was going on a camping trip that weekend and needed something that would be quick to make. Conveniently, I had a Mr. Beer Englishman's Nut Brown Ale HME can sitting around. I picked up a couple pounds of DME to finish it off.

Fermentation was absurdly active. FermCap wasn't enough to keep at least half a quart of beer goop from spilling out through the top, even when fermenting at a cool temp. Krausen didn't drop for a week. FG hit a perfect 1.013, though - not too low, not too high.

It has definite apple flavor, but it is smooth and subtle and blends well with the malts. Hop presence is subtle and also blends well - I was definitely worried about having hops that conflicted with the apple flavor. Also, tannin level started out high (from the apple juice) but seems to have settled out. I assume it was because I used unfiltered apple juice - if they were extracted from the grain, they would probably have been permanent.

When making this beer, remember this advice:

• Use pasteurized juice, with NO added flavor or sugar. 
• Don't boil the juice; keep it sealed until it is ready to top off. 
• Watch out for high krausen, overflow or exploding fermentors. 
• Don't use aroma or flavor hops; stick with bittering, and no more than 10-20 IBUs. You can use late additions in a future recipe if you're feeling adventurous.
• Go for a dark, rich style with lots of maltiness but no roasty character. No porters, no stouts. An American Amber or a Nut Brown Ale are both good choices.
• Use a dark crystal for a complementary flavor along with wheat or CaraPils for body & head retention. 
• Don't use too much apple juice, or you will end up closer to a cider; two gallons of juice per 5 gallon batch is a good amount, but you can adjust to your taste.

Here's my recipe. I aimed for 11 quarts but ended up with 11.1 quarts. I also added some Crystal 15 which I *normally wouldn't have added*. However, I had it sitting in the freezer and wanted to get rid of it. I've since discovered that I'm not a huge fan of Crystal 15, and would leave it out in the future.

If this turns out decent, I'll probably refine it and maybe create an all grain version, or at the very least an extract + hops boil.

Apple Brown Ale / Graff

Fruit Beer

Type: Extract	Date: 5/13/2011
Batch Size: 11.10 qt	Boil Size: 8.20 qt
Boil Time: 15 min	Equipment: Brew Pot, Full Boil All Grain (5 Gallon)
Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU 1 lbs DME Golden Light (Briess) (4.0 SRM) Dry Extract 16.37 % 1 lbs DME Sparkling Amber (Briess) (10.5 SRM) Dry Extract 16.37 % 1 lbs 3.4 oz Mr. Beer Englishman's Nut-Brown Ale HME (20.2 SRM) Extract 19.80 % 6.4 oz Crystal/Caramel Malt - 15L (15.0 SRM) Grain 6.55 % 4.0 oz Carapils (1.5 SRM) Grain 4.09 % 4.0 oz Crystal/Caramel Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4.09 % 2 lbs Apple Juice (6.0 SRM) Sugar 32.73 % 1 Pkgs English Ale (White Labs #WLP002)  Yeast-Ale
Beer Profile
Est Original  Gravity: 1.070 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.070 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.013 SG	Measured Final Gravity: 1.013 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 7.37 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: 7.45 %
Bitterness: 17.1 IBU	Calories: 315 cal/pint
Est Color: 14.0 SRM	Color: Color
Carbonation and Storage
Carbonation Type: Corn Sugar	Volumes of CO2: 2.5
Pressure/Weight: 70.2 gm	Carbonation Used: 67g
Keg/Bottling Temperature: 70.0 F	Age for: 28.0 days
Storage Temperature: 70.0 F

All Grain Brewing: Grain Crush and Efficiency

When brewing all grain, there are two things that will affect your efficiency more than anything else: grain crush and sparge technique. Grain crush affects your conversion efficiency while sparging affects your sparge efficiency. I'll be talking about sparge technique later, because grain crush is far and away the most important.

The finer your grain is crushed, the more easily the water and enzymes will reach the starchy goodness in the middle of your grains. A whole grain will go mostly unconverted, or require many hours to convert. Grain flour will convert in minutes. The ideal is to get somewhere in between these two extremes.

100% efficiency is attained by crushing the grain to flour in an ideal 'laboratory' setting. This includes the husks, and produces disgusting beer. Tannins are enzymatically extracted from the husks, and traditional sparging is impossible.

A bad crush, where about half of your grains are still whole, will probably get you about 50% efficiency. This was the case in my first two all grain batches, where I was lucky to get over 55% even though I mashed for over two hours.

Adjusting up and down between fine and coarse crushes is a tradeoff between higher efficiency versus difficulty sparging. Fortunately for us, we don't do traditional sparges in Brew in a Bag mashing. The problem in a traditional sparge is that if your crush is too fine, water won't be able to flow evenly through the grain bed. If you're lucky, you will get uneven rinsing. If you're unlucky, the sparge will get stuck. You'll have to mix everything back up, vorlauf again, and try again. You'll end up with so much extra water you'll have to boil for 3 hours. This sucks pretty hard.

When doing BIAB, we 'sparge' by soaking the grain bag in hot water for ten minutes and draining it. We repeat this as many times as we like to achieve maximum efficiency. Sparges don't get stuck. That means we prefer a very fine crush. Flour is fine, as long as you mix it in thoroughly so you don't have balls of dough. There is danger of shredding the hulls if you use certain types of mills, crush too fine, or use something like a food processor or blender to crush your grain. Remember, you are *crushing* your grain, not grinding or blending it!

If you have your own grain crusher, adjust your grinding plates so the endosperm (center of the barley grain) is crushed very fine (many small pieces, or some flour). Don't create too much flour, because it becomes hard to mix in. 20-30% flour is okay. Also don't let your hulls get too small or shredded.

If you crush your grain at your LHBS, ask them to adjust the mill to its finest setting. Then, run it through twice. The second crush won't make it any finer, but it will make 100% sure that no whole grains made it through.

After asking my LHBS to adjust the crush (someone had messed with the mill without them knowing), my efficiency jumped from 58% to 90%. I've since seen efficiency as high as 93-95%.

(Mike McDole mentioned this on one of the brewing network podcasts a while back. He likes his grain crushed very coarsely, and he said that MoreBeer had its grain mill set on the "Tasty" setting for a while. I couldn't stand it!).

All Grain Brewing: Boil Trub and Boil Volume

Recipe size used to be simple. If I wanted to make 2.5 gallons of beer, I designed a recipe for that amount, boiled however much water I wanted, and topped off to 10 quarts with distilled water. I hit my OG every time and ended up with exactly 10 quarts in the keg. I'm learning more and more that it isn't so simple.

First off, when doing a full boil, there is no top-off. Sure, if you end up with less than intended you can top off a little, but you can't go the other way - if you have too much water, you can't just make it disappear. You'll end up with beer of a lower gravity.

Which brings me to number two, evaporation rate. This is tough. Evaporation rate differs based on how long you boil, the temperature, humidity and pressure of the room you're in, the pot you're using and what you're boiling. I suggested in an earlier post that you test the evaporation rate of your pot with water, but that is only an approximation. Beer wort will evaporate at a lower rate in practice than what you measured from your water test.

Let's say you have your evaporation rate down. After your boil, you have exactly 10 quarts of wort. Are you really going to dump all of that in? Hell no. You've got hops in there, absorbing up all your water. That isn't coming out. If you're doing all grain, you have *tons* of break material (reminder: cold break is the gray-ish material that separates from your wort when it cools). That break material should mostly stay in the pot if you can help it.

All in all, you'll be lucky to get 8.5-9 quarts of your boil. Sure, you could dump in all 10 quarts, but then you'll end up with more fermenter trub, which brings me to number four...

Fermenter trub. Stuff is going to fall out of your beer and settle during fermentation. When you rack to secondary or a bottling bucket, that material won't come with it, and your total volume of usable beer will be less. At this point, if you're doing a 10 quart all grain batch, you will probably have about 8 quarts, or 2 gallons.

The solution is usually to just make more beer. Design your recipe for 12 quarts (3 gallons). After your wort has cooled, remove as much boil trub as you can. You can either strain it out somehow or let it settle and only rack the clear wort into your fermenter. This means leaving 1-1.5 quarts in the kettle, and 10.5 quarts in the fermenter.

The method I use is to first create a whirlpool in the kettle while it is still hot by stirring the wort immediately after the boil and adding the aroma hops. Once the wort cools, break material and hops will tend to settle in the center in a cone. Then I transfer from the edge of the kettle, since most of the trub is in the center. I siphon from the kettle into a sanitized bucket. Then I allow the trub to settle out for an hour or two, or until I have at least 10-11 quarts of clear wort. With most beers, the difference between the trub and the clear beer will be very obvious. Tilt the bucket back to get the trub away from the spigot (make sure the spigot is sanitized!) and rack from the bucket to the fermenter with some tubing. Make sure, using the markings on your bucket, that you get at least 10 - 10.5 quarts in the fermenter. I generally end up with 2.5 gallons during bottling when I use this method.

Yeast: Pitching Rates

Common wisdom is that you can't pitch too much yeast. This makes sense, because long delays before fermentation conjure of images of the brewing boogeyman: infection. After browsing homebrew forums for days, you'd be forgiven for thinking the best option is to make the biggest damn starter you can and pitch a quart of slurry every time.

I'm here to tell you that's bullshit.

First of all, if you follow good sanitation practices and don't brew outdoors during a hurricane, infection problems are minimal, regardless of how long it takes fermentation to start.

Second, your yeast need to reproduce to create many of the esters you expect in your beer. Sure, in an Pale Ale you might not care, but what about a Weizen?

I learned the hard way today that you can pitch too much yeast. My all grain bavarian weizen, based on Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles "Harold-is-Weizen" recipe, doesn't taste like a hefeweizen. Because I pitched too much yeast slurry from my last batch (only about half a cup to a cup in total), the yeast didn't create enough of the banana and clove esters that represent the style. The result is a dry, refreshing and mostly tasteless brew.

All is not lost! The beer itself is well-made - it just doesn't taste like a hefe (or anything, for that matter). More like an American Wheat. The solution is to add fruit extracts! I figure I'll add a fruit extract to a third of the batch, another extract to a third of the batch, and try the last third without extracts. The extracts will be added at bottling time, on a per bottle basis. I need to experiment with the proper amount, probably by tasting small amounts of beer with different amounts of extract in them until I like the taste. I'll choose between cherry, raspberry, apricot and strawberry.

All Grain Recipe: #13 Stone Arrogant Bastard Clone

So I was listening to JZ's Can You Brew It? podcast and, after just finishing up a previous clone, I thought I'd try one of their clone recipes. The first thing that came to mind was Stone's Arrogant Bastard, a hoppy, malty, delicious and super drinkable (for its ABV, anyway) beer. The problem was that they had deemed it 'not cloned' on the CYBI episode I listened to a few months back.

Lo and behold, they had a rebrew, and it was good! I whipped out BeerSmith and started calculating faster than you can spell 'inebriated'.

The episode is here.

Here's the recipe, scaled to my system. Unfortunately, my evaporation rate was way lower than my tests had predicted. The recipe is *designed* for 12 quarts. Please remember that before you try replicating it!

I messed up quite a bit here, not just with the evaporation rate. I also accidentally used Simcoe for the bittering additions instead of Chinook. Arrogant Bastard is (according to CYBI) a SMaSH recipe: Single Malt, Single Hop. The malt is Special B, a Belgian crystal malt that gives a very rich, raisin-y flavor. The hop is Chinook, which I think tastes very strongly of pineapples.

I also wrote down the recipe wrong, scaled it improperly, mashed a degree or two too high and overall just missed my OG and FG by a ton. The important thing is to use 90% 2 row, 10% Special B, only Chinook hops, OG of 1.066 and ABV of 7.2%.

This brew was also my last time doing a triple sparge. I found that double sparging works just as well and requires less work. I found no evidence of tannins in any brew where I triple sparged.

In fact, I messed up so much that I'll post the original 24 quart, 70% efficiency recipe from the show after this one. I went back and made sure the recipe is 100% correct.

Here is my recipe, followed by the original 6-gallon recipe.

All Grain Recipe: #12 Pliny the Elder clone

I don't know when it happened, but I'm a hophead now. Just a couple of months ago I didn't care for the overpowering hop flavors and aromas of west coast IPAs, and now I'm suddenly craving hops. I can only imagine it's a combination of drinking more craft beer and doing hop taste tests. Chewing on raw hop pellets can really desensitize you.

So of course, once I realized this I went out and picked up some Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewery. I've had this before, but it was too much for me. Now it is like heaven in a glass. Dry and drinkable, with a very complex hop character that makes it far tastier than typical IPAs that tend to have a one-sided hop flavor. It is bursting in hop flavor and while the bitterness is high, it is a smooth bitterness that doesn't stick in your mouth unpleasantly (see Stone Ruination, Green Flash West Coast IPA for examples of IPAs that taste like you've been sucking on a grapefruit long after you've finished off the bottle).

Thus, next up is a clone of Pliny. Vinnie from Russian River has made no secret of his recipe - it is freely available, and many people clone it. You can get a clone kit from MoreBeer, or you can see this pdf of the recipe. The MoreBeer kit doesn't quite match the original PDF. Also, the recipe has changed over the years and apparently uses hop extract to achieve a higher bitterness than is possible with hop boiling alone.
edit: I tasted this recently and it is definitely extraordinarily bitter. It also didn't come out as dry as the real thing. The hop flavor profile is pretty close, though.

My goal is still to iron out the kinks in my process. However, I might as well make something delicious in the process. Plus, this recipe will teach me about dry hopping. I also plan to increase the batch size to make up for the large amount of trub I'm getting after boil. I'll be transferring the cooled wort to a sanitized bottling bucket, which will let me measure out exactly how much volume I ended up with and allow the trub to settle out before I transfer it via the bucket's spigot.

Here are some other things I'll be doing that are new with this batch:
Rinsing the grain only twice, but with a larger amount of water each time.
Using my new refractometer to get a feel for how well it works. I'll measure the efficiency after first, second and third runnings.
Repitching my WLP001 from batch #8 (my first all grain), and making a starter with it a few days before.
Preheating the oven to 200 F and turning it off in the hopes that it keeps temp better than leaving the oven on.
Using 200 F sparge water so that the grain is about 168-170.
Boiling 90 minutes.

In practice, I messed up a few times. The biggest one is that I calculated the water for a 60 minute boil, but the hops for a 90 minute boil. I had to adjust the amount of bittering hops to compensate for only boiling 60 minutes. Fortunately, there isn't much difference between 60 and 90 minutes when it comes to bitterness extraction, due to diminishing returns.

My 24x24 grain bag from MoreBeer finally gave up the ghost. I saw holes in the bottom and sides after this batch, so I tossed it out with the spent grain.

The second fuckup was underestimating the amount of trub. I made an 11 quart batch (actually ended up with 11.25 due to less evaporation than expected), but only racked about 9 quarts instead of 10.

Pitched from my starter mason jar and got a nice quick fermentation. The taste of this beer was incredible, even before finishing. A week later, I dropped hopped by putting the first dose in a sanitized & boiled hop bag and hanging it from the lid of the fermentor. I did the same thing with the second dose a little over a week later.

The main thing I've noticed about the result is that it is pretty harsh and not as dry as the original. The recipe gives 152 as the mash temp, but newer recipes use 148. I will probably adjust this to use 148 to attenuate more. I'll also give it a few weeks to age (it hasn't actually been 3 weeks bottled yet) before assessing the hops again. If the bitterness remains harsh, I will try a smoother 90 minute bittering hop like Warrior. Note: The morebeer.com Pliny recipe uses Warrior for the 90 minute addition.

Here's the recipe, from the PDF linked at the start of the post:
(edit: I've included the original 5 gallon recipe at the end).