The frost giant Surtur.
Winter is great time for many homebrewers to try brewing a lager. The fundamentals of brewing lager beer do not vary with the seasons. However, for homebrewers without an actively-cooled fermentation chamber, colder outside temperatures may provide a seasonal opportunity.
If you look around your house, you may find places — such as a basement or attic — that are significantly cooler than the rest of the house. Depending on where you live, an unheated garage or outdoor shed may also fall within a usable temperature range for a period of time.
In winter, the air is typically drier than in the warmer days of summer. As such, evaporative cooling of your fermenting wort — via the wet T-shirt method — can be more effective. If you have a place in your house that hovers in the 55–60 °F (13–16 °C) range all day, you can easily use a wet-T shirt to drop a 5.0-gallon (19-L) carboy into the lager beer fermenting range. (In dry air, a 5.0-gallon/19-L carboy can be cooled up to 10 °F/5 °C if the T-shirt stays wet and you have a fan blowing across it.)
If you choose to ferment your lager in an unheated garage or outside shed, watch the weather report carefully and be prepared to move the carboy inside if a cold snap is expected. (Alternately, you can heat a carboy or bucket fermenter on a heating pad, or wrap a fermenter in a heating belt. Connect the warming device to a thermostat will allow you to keep the fermenting beer in the proper temperature range.)
When choosing to brew a lager, look at the options you have in yeast strains, particularly their optimal fermentation temperature range. Pick a yeast that ferments best in a temperature range you can easily maintain. Always pitch enough yeast, and slightly overpitching may be a good thing if you plan to ferment at the low end of a yeast’s range, or if a cold snap might drive temperatures temporarily below that range. If you pick an appropriate yeast strain and keep an eye on your weather forecast, you can hopefully get at least most of your primary fermentation finished at a reasonably stable temperature in the yeast’s proper range.
Lagers are fermented at cooler temperatures than ales. However, colder is not automatically better. If you have the choice between fermenting the lager relatively stably in the high end of the yeast’s range vs. more variably in the low end of the range, choose the former option. It’s better to have steady temperatures than colder temperatures (within the yeast’s range, at least).
The recipe given here is the 3.0-gallon (11-L) all-grain version of my rauchbier (or smoked beer). There’s a lager version, if you’d like to brew a smoked Märzen, and an ale option if you’d like to brew a beer similar to a smoked alt. I’ve previously posted the 5.0-gallon (19-L), partial mash version of this. Now I’m posting the 3.0-gallon (11-L) version because it is an easy way to brew all-grain in your kitchen. (In other word, indoors, where it’s warm.)
Surtur’s Sword
Rauchbier (or smoked alt)
by Chris Colby
All-grain; English units
DESCRIPTION
A smoky lager that goes great with barbecue.
INGREDIENTS (for 3 gallons)
Water
carbon-filtered tap water
Malt (for an OG of 1.048, at 65% extract efficiency, and 9 SRM)
5 lb. 12 oz. Weyermann rauchmalz
3.5 oz. Weyermann CaraMunich II (~45 °L)
1.0 oz. aromatic malt (or melanoidin malt)
Hops (for 20 IBU total)
Tettnang hops (19 IBU)
0.75 oz., at 4% alpha acids, boiled for 60 minutes
Tettnang hops (1 IBU)
0.25 oz., at 4% alpha acids, boiled for 5 minutes
Yeast (for an FG of 1.010 and 4.9 %ABV)
White Labs WLP20 (Octoberfest/Märzen Lager) or Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) yeast
(1.75-qt. yeast starter)
Other
0.3 tsp. Irish moss
2.5 oz. corn sugar (for priming)
PROCEDURES
In your brewpot, heat 8.25 qts. of brewing liquor to 163 °F. Place crushed grains in a large steeping bag and submerge in brewpot water. Mash at 152 °F for 60 minutes, stirring and heating briefly every 10 minutes to maintain the mash temperature. In a separate pot, heat 7.0 qts. of water to 170 °F. When the mash is done, heat it to 170 °F for a mash out. Stir constantly. Lift bag and let drip into brewpot until you can move it over to the cooler without splattering too much wort. Scoop or pour the wort from the brewpot into the cooler. Recirculate the wort until it is clear, then run off. Sparge steadily over 60 minutes (collect about a cup of wort from the cooler roughy every 2 minutes) to collect about 3.75 gallons. Heat the wort as you collect it. When you’re done collecting the wort, bring it to a boil. Add the first dose of hops and boil wort for 60 minutes. Add other hops and Irish moss at times indicated. Chill wort to 55 °F, then rack to fermenter. Add water make 3.0 gallons, aerate wort thoroughly, and pitch yeast. Ferment at 55 °F. When fermentation slows greatly, let the temperature rise to 60 °F and hold there for three days. (Or, try kräusening.) After fermentation stops, condition the beer cold (around 40 °F) for 6 weeks. (If you’ve initially pitched enough yeast and ran a good fermentation, it shouldn’t take longer than that to lager.) Rack to a keg or bottling bucket. Carbonate to 2.4 volumes of CO2.
Ale version:
Make a 1-qt. (1-L) yeast starter of the ale strain of your choice. Ferment near the low end of the strain’s fermentation range. Carbonate the beer to 2.4 volumes of CO2. (Use the residual CO2 chart to figure out the appropriate amount of priming sugar.)
Surtur’s Sword
Rauchbier (or smoked alt)
by Chris Colby
All-grain; metric units
INGREDIENTS (for 11 L)
Water
carbon-filtered tap water
Malt (for an OG of 1.048, at 65% extract efficiency, and 9 SRM)
2.6 kg Weyermann rauchmalz
100 g Weyermann CaraMunich II (~45 °L)
35 g aromatic malt (or melanoidin malt)
Hops (for 20 IBU total)
Tettnang hops (19 IBU)
21 g, at 4% alpha acids, boiled for 60 minutes
Tettnang hops (1 IBU)
7.0 g, at 4% alpha acids, boiled for 5 minutes
Yeast (for an FG of 1.010 and 4.9 %ABV)
White Labs WLP20 (Octoberfest/Märzen Lager) or Wyeast 2206 (Bavarian Lager) yeast
(1.75-L yeast starter)
Other
0.3 tsp. Irish moss
70 g corn sugar (for priming)
PROCEDURES
In your brewpot, heat 7.8 L of brewing liquor to 73 °C. Place crushed grains in a large steeping bag and submerge in brewpot water. Mash at 67 °C for 60 minutes, stirring and heating briefly every 10 minutes to maintain the mash temperature. In a separate pot, heat 6.6 L of water to 77 °C. When the mash is done, heat it to 77 °C for a mash out. Stir constantly. Lift bag and let drip into brewpot until you can move it over to the cooler without splattering too much wort. Scoop or pour the wort from the brewpot into the cooler. Recirculate the wort until it is clear, then run off. Sparge steadily over 60 minutes (collect about a cup of wort from the cooler roughy every 2 minutes) to collect about 14 L. Heat the wort as you collect it. When you’re done collecting the wort, bring it to a boil. Add the first dose of hops and boil wort for 60 minutes. Add other hops and Irish moss at times indicated. Chill wort to 13 °C, then rack to fermenter. Add water make 11 L, aerate wort thoroughly, and pitch yeast. Ferment at 13 °C. When fermentation slows greatly, let the temperature rise to 16 °C and hold there for three days. (Or, try kräusening.) After fermentation stops, condition the beer cold (around 4.4 °C) for 6 weeks. (If you’ve initially pitched enough yeast and ran a good fermentation, it shouldn’t take longer than that to lager.) Rack to a keg or bottling bucket. Carbonate to 2.4 volumes of CO2.
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