Archives for January 2015

Edge of Seventeen Maibock

Beauty of Spring 5

This will arrive some day. When it does, have a Maibock in your hand.

Here is a recipe for a kräusened Maibock. The kräusening aids with finishing the beer and conditioning it. This is a light-colored (9 SRM) beer, fairly strong (7.0% ABV), with more hop bitterness (33 IBU) than a traditional bock. The malt, bitterness, and body are well balanced. The key to success in brewing this beer is to pitch an adequate amount of healthy yeast to the main batch and add some vigorously fermenting kräusen beer to the main batch as fermentation winds to a halt. This should take about 4 months to condition (lager) appropriately, but will be well worth the wait.

 

Edge of Seventeen Maibock

by Chris Colby

All-grain; English units

 

DESCRIPTION

Edge of Seventeen is a 7% ABV, roughly 17 °Plato bockbier brewed for spring. Lighter in color and more attenuated than a traditional bock, this beer is malty, but balanced by a firm hop bitterness. This recipe employs kräusening to condition the beer. The initial batch of beer is 4.5 gallons, and slightly more bitter than the target; the 2 qt. of kräusen beer added after primary fermentation brings the beer down to its target bitterness, cleans the beer up, and helps the yeast hit the appropriate level of attenuation.

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Ten-Gallon BIAB Cream Ale Brew Day

Pouring in 20 pounds of grain to get the process started.

Pouring in 20 pounds of grain to get the process started.

I’ve long been a champion of small batches, but every now and then I find a recipe that I want to brew a lot of. My Cream Ale recipe is one of those. Thanks to demand from friends (and myself), a batch of this stuff tends to go pretty quickly.

To brew 10-gallon (38-L) batches, I don’t have an elaborate brewing “sculpture,” but I do have a stainless steel keg that has been converted into a kettle.* Using the Brew in a Bag (BIAB) technique, that “keggle” can double as a mash tun and kettle, all in one. [Read more…]

Maibock (IV: Yeast and Fermentation)

DSCN0062Brewing a Maibock is fairly straightforward. The recipe can be simple and wort production does not have to be complicated. The part of brewing as Maibock that separates the best homebrewed examples from the rest is the fermentation.

 

Yeast Strains

Maibock is a lager, and most lager yeast strains will work well for this type of beer. The best strains, as recommended by their manufacturers, are Wyeast 2124 (Bohemian Lager), Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager), Wyeast 2308 (Munich Lager), White Labs WLP820 (Octoberfest/Märzen Lager), White Labs WLP833 (German Bock Lager), White Labs WLP838 (Southern German Lager), and White Labs WLP920 (Old Bavarian Lager Yeast).

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Beer News (Jan 8–21)

BWJlogoIf you’re reading this, odds are you enjoy beer. And it’s likely that your parents also enjoyed beer . . . or wine or spirits. In fact, it is possible that your ancestors have enjoyed alcohol for hundreds of thousands of generations. Recently, scientists discovered evidence that humans have been consuming alcohol for 10 million years, long before they understood how to control fermentations to produce alcoholic beverages. Here’s link to the original article.

 

What a Croc!

Ever go to a wedding reception, only to find out that the bar only has macrobrews? It could be worse, you could have ended up being poisoned by the beer. This happened in Mazambique where around 70 guests died after drinking beer that was supposedly tinged with crocodile bile. Although the poisoning was real, the idea that crocodile bile was the poison was questioned and later discarded as the culprit.

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Maibock (III: Boiling and Hops)

IMG_2091Wort production — mashing and running off the wort — for a Maibock is unlikely to cause most homebrewers any problems. For a 5.0-gallon (19-L) batch, you’ll need 11–16 lbs. (5.0–7.3 kg) of grain — assuming you get an extract efficiency between 65 and 80% — to hit your target original gravity (OG 1.064–1.072). If you have a 10-gallon (38-L) or larger mash tun, you’ll have plenty of room.

For some homebrewers, however, kettle size may be limiting. Fully-sparged, 11–16 lb. of grain should yield 7 to 10 gallons (26 to 38 L) of pre-boil wort at around 11 °Plato (SG 1.044). If your extract efficiency is on the low end, and you’re shooting for a Maibock on the high end of the OG range, a 10-gallon (38-L) kettle will not be large enough.

To calculate how much pre-boil wort your grain bed will yield, assuming it is fully sparged, multiply your weight of your grain bed (in pounds) times 0.65 gallons per pound — this will give you a rough approximation (in gallons) of the volume of pre-boil wort. If this is more than you can comfortably boil in 90 minutes, you can add more grain to your recipe, but collect less wort. (Estimating how much grain to add can be tricky, though.) You could also supplement your all-grain wort with malt extract. You could also reformulate the recipe for a lower starting gravity.

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Maibock (II: Malts and Mashing)

IMG_1676

Adding 5–25% Munich malt to your grist gives a nice malt character that is appropriate in a bockbier.

Most Maibock recipes are very simple. The beer should be pale and better attenuated than other bockbiers, so the grist is usually 100% base malts. Crystal malts are not needed because caramel flavor and the extra body that crystal malts add are not desired. In the same vein, there is no call to add CaraPils (or CaraAnything) to your grist. A simple mix of Pilsner, Vienna, and Munich malt is ideal.

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Maibock (I:Intro)

This is the introductory post for another entry in Beer and Wine Journal’s beer style series. Previous styles profiled are American Hoppy Ales (American Pale Ale, IPA, etc.), Dry Stout, German Wheat Beer, Golden Ale, Porter, and Russian Imperial Stout.

 

Beauty of Spring 5

Spring

With the current wintery blast engulfing most of the US, many homebrewers may be looking forward to Spring. One way to prepare for the annual return of warmer weather is to brew a Maibock (which translates from the German as May Bock). Although commercial Maibocks are often available from late-winter through early summer, they are most strongly associated with Spring. Most Maibocks clock in at around 6–7% ABV. So, if you brew one now (in January), you can lager it for 2–3 months and it will be in great shape by April or May.

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Beer News (Dec 16-Jan 7)

BWJlogo

This graphic? Again?

OK, here’s our first post of 2015. Let’s start with a listicle (an article in the form of a list). Here are the most influential beer websites in the world, as ranked by popularity. It’s an interesting mix of commercial beer sites, craft brew enthusiast sites, and one homebrewing retailer. Of course, if they had a list of beer websites with the most intelligent and best educated readers (and most pandering editor), it would be this site. Am I right? Continuing with lists, Meadist issued their list of the top 5 meads. (See, Beer and Wine Journal does cover wine as well as beer.)

[Read more…]