Tasting : Deschutes Black Butte Porter clone

Even though I bottled this clone about 6 weeks ago, I really took my time writing up an actual review of the beer. I've had several of them over the past few weeks, and was a little wary of it overall at first. The carbonation took longer to develop compared to most of my beers. I'm not sure if this was due to pooped-out yeast or not, but I'm quite sure it had nothing to do with temperatures, as the bottles were sitting in a room set at about 70 F, which is my typical bottle-conditioning temperature. After awhile, however, the carbonation finally came around.

I was also worried that the beer would be too sweet, as my FG was high at 1.018, compared to the 1.012 target given by the brewer. I admit that that number seems a bit odd to me; with the target OG of 1.058, a FG that low would give an ABV of about 6%, which is much higher than the actual 5.2% listed by Deschutes for the real Black Butte Porter. This would also indicate an apparent attenuation of 79%, much higher than the average of 69% for Wyeast 1968. Either way, I'm pretty happy with how the beer came out. As usual, I don't have any of the commercial beer on hand to compare, unfortunately!

Appearance: Poured with a moderate-large, very creamy tan head. Pretty good retention, sticks around for quite awhile before fading to 1/2-finger. Body is a very dark brown, even black, and appears opaque... but when held to bright light, yields some ruby highlights and excellent clarity.

Aroma: Aroma of mostly dark, rich chocolate... slightly sweet. Some coffee and roasted notes as well, but maybe not as much of the roasted character as their should be. Perhaps a touch of spicy hops in there.

Taste: Again, while there ARE roasted and coffee notes present, the chocolate really wins out in this beer. There is a touch of tartness that may be from the wheat malt. Hop bitterness is moderate-low in the finish, which is more on the sweet than dry side. No diacetyl.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied, moderate-low carbonation. Just a bit of astringency (ok).

Overall: My porter experience is much lower than with other beer styles, but this is a pretty tasty beer. I don’t remember the Black Butte being overly roasty, and wouldn’t have expected as much with this recipe, so I think it’s probably in the ballpark of the commercial beer. Pretty enjoyable overall.

Tasting : #makingitwork

I'd love to be able to try every beer style out there, and many versions of each style, but it's just not possible right now in New Brunswick. This is where homebrewing comes in handy; you can basically dive in to any beer style and give it a go. However, when evaluating the beer when it's finally ready to be sampled, someone like myself is at a disadvantage - I don't have a commercial example to compare it to. I also don't have full confidence in my palate yet, or my ability to express what I'm smelling or tasting in words.

However, I DO know what I like, and the BJCP style guide is always a big help. So, when I got to sample my Munich Dunkel a few days ago, I was pleasantly surprised overall. This beer was brewed back in January, and was lagered for at least 2 months before being bottled. I had hoped to get a very malty, smooth, easy-drinking dark lager, and I think this beer fits the bill.

Appearance: Poured with a moderate-sized, light tan, thick and moussy head. The head is very long-lasting, before finally fading to almost a full-finger of foam. Body is dark brown with ruby highlights when held to the light, with excellent clarity.

Aroma: Very malty (bready). Slightly sweet, with a touch of milk chocolate. No hops.

Taste: Malty and rich. Not overly sweet at all - the breadiness from the Munich malt far outweighs any sweet characters in the beer. Again, some milk chocolate is present. Just a touch of spicy hop flavor, with moderate-low bitterness in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied, with medium carbonation. Smooth.

Overall: Like I said, pretty happy with the results of this beer. If anything, it could probably be even MORE malty... I wouldn't mind trying one of those recipes where the entire grist is Munich malt, just to see what the results would be like.

Brewing a Standard American Lager

There's a lot of arguments in beer-related forums on the internet about what exactly separates a "beer geek" from a "beer snob". In my opinion, a beer geek is simply someone who is really into beer (homebrewing not necessarily included), while a beer snob is usually a beer geek that looks down on others based on what they're drinking - usually a macro, fizzy yellow beer.

Those fizzy, yellow beers actually do have their place. If I've just mowed my lawn, a cold, light beer can be really refreshing. Would I generally prefer a more flavorful beer, such as a Blonde Ale, Czech Pilsner, or Dortmunder Export? Usually, yes. Are these American Lagers beers that I want to drink all of the time? Definitely not. But I have nothing against enjoying an equivalent to a Budweiser during the right occasion, and when you get right down to it, American Lagers are still what the majority of people drink.

Somewhere under all this is a mashtun

So, I decided to actually try brewing one of these beers, for three reasons:
1) Summer is approaching fast.
2) A lot of my family members aren't into craft beer too much, so I thought I could donate most of this batch to the summer cottage.
3) American Lagers are generally thought to be one of the trickier styles to homebrew. It sounds kind of laughable at first, because the recipes usually aren't complex at all, but when you think about it, it makes sense. They're supposed to be quite clean, easy-drinking beers, that don't have a lot of ingredients to hide behind. Flaws would be easily detectable (a little DMS or green apple is ok). Plus, they're lagers, so you have the complications of lager yeast/fermentation thrown in as well.

According to the BJCP guidelines, there are three types of American Lagers (under the Light Lager category): Lite (e.g. Bud Light), Standard (e.g. Budweiser), and Premium American Lager (e.g. Red Stripe). All normally use an adjunct (usually flaked rice or corn) in the grist to provide a grainy/corn-like sweetness, and to lighten the body, with more barley/less adjunct being used from Lite to Premium. Also, bitterness and ABV% increase slightly, as do aroma and taste complexity as a result.

I decided to split the difference and brew a Standard American Lager, using the very basic recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. This was my first time using flaked corn in a beer, which made up about 18% of the grist, with the remaining being Canadian 2-row. The mash temperature is pretty low at 149 F, and BCS recommended a long mash of 90 minutes, due to the time needed to convert the flaked corn. I went with a bit lower time of 70 minutes, since I also planned on doing a mash-out. A small addition of Hallertau at 60 minutes provides a scant 12 IBUs of bitterness. That's the recipe... simple. As for the yeast, I ordered the Wyeast 2007 Pilsen Lager that BCS recommended, which apparently is based on the Budweiser strain (according to the yeast chart on mrmalty.com). Wyeast describes it as being a mild and neutral strain, with minimal sulfur and diacetyl production, which is great for this type of "naked" beer.

I'll probably lager the beer for about 4 weeks when primary fermentation is complete, and should have it bottled and carbonated in time for early July... a perfect time to have this type of beer on hand - even if I still do prefer more flavorful, complex beers!

Recipe targets: (5.5 gallons, 83% efficiency): OG 1.046, FG 1.008, IBU 12, SRM 3, ABV 4.85%

Grains & Other:
3.09 kg Canadian 2-row
682 g Flaked corn

Hops:
Hallertau - 28 g (3.4% AA) @ 60 min

Misc.:
1/2 tsp yeast nutrient @ 15 min
1/2 tab Irish Moss @ 5 min

Yeast: Wyeast 2007 Pilsen Lager (PD Apr.10/12, with a 2 L and then 1.25 L starter)

Water: Fredericton city water, carbon-filtered; mash water treated with 2 g of Gypsum, 2 g CaCl2

- Brewed May 7th, 2012, by myself. 70-minute mash with 12.45 L of strike water, mashed in at 149.5 F. Mashed out with 6.25 L of boiling water to 163 F. Sparged with ~4.5 gallons of 168 F water for final volume of 7.25 gallons in the kettle. 90-minute boil. Chilled to 60 F with immersion chiller. OG 1.048. Poured/filtered into Better Bottle. Placed BB in fermentation chamber with temp set to 45 F. Pitched yeast at ~50 F hours later, aerated by shaking for several minutes before and after. Placed back in ferm. chamber with temp set at 50 F.

- 9/5/12 - Visible activity in airlock, bubbling about 3-4 times per 10 seconds.

- 10/5/12 - Same activity in AM, so increased temp to 53 F. By evening, bubbling 5-6 times per 10 seconds.

- 13/5/12 - Activity starting to slow a bit, so I took the fermenter out of the chamber and left it at room temperature for a diacetyl rest... temp raised up to 66 F by next day. Placed back in the fermenter 16/5/12 and decreased temp back to 50 F gradually over a day or two.

- 3/6/12 - Racked beer into secondary, 5-gallon fermenter, and decreased temp in fermentation chamber by 1 F every 12 hours or so, aiming for a final lagering temp of about 38 F.

- 25/6/12 - FG a bit high at 1.012, but still just within range for the style.

- 26/6/12 - Bottled with 151 g table sugar, aiming for 3 vol CO2 for 5 gallons, with max temp of 66 F reached.

- 22/7/12 - Tasting notes...

Brewing an American IPA : My NHC replacement beer

I consider myself very lucky, as a beer-lover, to have been able to visit San Diego for a beer trip last September. I'm also lucky to have been able to try, both on tap and bottled, the Alpine Beer Co. Duet, a fantastic American IPA. I was also lucky enough to have been given some brief notes on the recipe for this beer by the owner/brewmaster of Alpine, and made a homebrewed clone-attempt in early January. While almost impossible to compare it to the real Duet since I don't have access to it here in Canada, I still enjoyed the result enough to enter it into the ALES Open in Saskatchewan this month, which is the Canadian qualifier for the final round of the National Homebrewing Competition in June.

Ok, so I was lucky once more! The beer won a bronze medal in the IPA category (my Oktoberfest also won a gold in the European Amber Lager category), which means that it can now move on to the final round of the NHC. However, my "clone" has already been bottled for over 2 months, and its wonderful hop aroma and flavor is fading as we speak. I would never even hope to win a medal at the NHC, let alone in a category as competitive as IPA, but if you're going to enter, you might as well go for broke, right? While I would love to be able to brew the exact same recipe again, both Simcoe and Amarillo hops - which are used in equal amounts in this beer - are in very short supply right now. I may be able to find them through online ordering, but I don't have the time for them to be delivered to Canada, brew up a new batch, and have it finished in time to ship to the NHC. I'm down to 3 oz of Simcoe on hand, and I'm completely out of Amarillo.

So, I decided to brew a new American IPA recipe. You're actually allowed to do this... as long as it's a beer in the same category for what you've qualified for, you can change whatever you want, brew a whole new recipe, enter in a different subcategory, etc. I kept the grist close to the same as the Duet clone, except I split the base grains into both 2-row AND Maris Otter, and upped the Crystal and took out the Victory malt. I also added 5 g of gypsum to the mash to try to accentuate the hop bite a little.

I DID make some more noticeable changes in the hop schedule, however. I made a larger Magnum addition at the beginning of the boil to increase the IBUs for the beer, and instead of equal Simcoe/Amarillo throughout the boil, I went with equal Crystal/Centennial at 10 minutes and flameout (with a 10-minute whirlpool before chilling). Once fermentation is complete, I plan on splitting the batch in two, and dry-hopping one half with Simcoe/Citra, and the other half with Columbus/Nugget. I imagine I'll enter the Simcoe/Citra half, but I'll try to taste both and make my mind up then.

Mash temps, boil length, yeast, and fermentation temperatures are otherwise the same as for the Duet clone. I'm hoping for a good beer; while it may not come out as good as the Duet clone, I should still have lots of IPA on hand for the summer, medal or no medal!

Recipe targets: (5.5 gallons, 75% efficiency): OG 1.066, FG 1.012, IBU 54, SRM 8.4, ABV 7%

Grains & Other:
2.27 kg Canadian 2-row
2.27 kg Maris Otter
454 g Wheat malt
304 g Caramunich II (45 L)
150 g Crystal 30 L
114 g Acid malt
227 g table sugar

Hops:
Magnum - 29 g (9% AA - adj. for age) @ 60 min
Magnum - 14 g (11.6% AA) @ 60 min
Centennial - 28 g (7% AA - adj. for age) @ 10 min
Crystal - 28 g (1.8% AA - adj. for age) @ 10 min
Centennial - 28 g @ 0 min, whirlpool for 10 min
Crystal - 28 g @ 0 min, whirlpool for 10 min
Citra/Simcoe - 42 g each dry-hop in 1/2 batch, for 7 days
Columbus/Nugget - 42 g each dry-hop in 1/2 batch, for 7 days

Misc.:
1/2 tsp yeast nutrient @ 15 min
1/2 tab Irish Moss @ 5 min

Yeast: US-05 Safale, rehydrated

Water: Fredericton city water, carbon-filtered; mash water treated with 5 g of Gypsum

- Brewed April 22, 2012 by myself. 60-minute mash with 14.5 L of strike water, mashed in at 150 F. Mashed out with 9.25 L of ~203 F water to 168 F. Sparged with ~3 gallons of 168 F water for final volume of 6.75 gallons in the kettle. 60-minute boil. Chilled to 65 F with immersion chiller. OG 1.061 (so, 1.065 after sugar addition in fermenter). Poured into Better Bottle. Pitched yeast at 65 F, aerated by shaking for several minutes before and after.

- 23/4/12 - In AM, airlock hardly bubbling at all, temp 64 F. Increased temperature in the room. By PM, bubbling almost every second, temp up to 66 F.

- 24/4/12 - In AM, bubbling more than every second, temp 68 F. When it started to slow a bit in the evening, added sugar (boiled in ~1 cup of water and then cooled).

- 25/4/12 - In AM, airlock blown off carboy, temp still 68 F. Activity gradually slowed again by evening.

- 6/5/12 - Gravity reading of 1.014. Racked beer into two 3-gallon carboys (about 10 L each) and dry-hopped as indicated in recipe. Left in room at room temperature.

- 15/5/12 - Bottled 2 days late, both halves with 59 g table sugar each, aiming for 2.5 vol CO2 for 2.5 gallons, max temp 68 F reached.

- 7/8/12 - NHC Final Round results... 

- 4/9/12 - Finally got around to posting the tasting notes. Both dry-hop versions are good IPAs, but they play second fiddle to the Duet clone.

Tasting : Boilerplate Bitter

Having bottled this beer about six weeks ago, I've had the chance to try it 7-8 times. I've been holding off on blogging about my thoughts on the beer, mainly because it's been pretty difficult to put it into words... a problem I find I have with a lot of beer tastings, due to my limited vocabulary and limited experience with many beer styles!

However, I think I can say now, unfortunately, that I'm not a huge fan of this beer. It's definitely a pretty tasty, sessionable beer, but in terms of how good it is as a Standard/Ordinary Bitter, I'd have to say it misses the mark. I blame this mostly on the Amber malt, which I had never used before and therefore probably should have used more sparingly. The 1/2 lb seems to have overpowered the contribution from the Crystal malts. So, the search for a house bitter continues... next time, I'd definitely lower (or even cut out?) the Amber malt quantity.

Appearance: Poured with a very small, white head that quickly fades to a film on top of the beer. Body is dark amber/light copper, with good - but not excellent - clarity.

Aroma: Difficult-to-place aroma... I find it very similar to Berley’s Best Bitter (a previous Special Bitter I brewed last year), but there was no Special Roast used in this recipe. Earthy, slightly spicy, almost with a bit of a chocolate note, likely due to the Amber malt. No noticeable fruity esters from the yeast. Malt aroma is lower than it should be, and the caramel quality is negligable.

Taste: Moderate earthy hop flavor, with moderate-high bitterness in the finish. Again, the malt presence is much lower than it probably should be, and fruitiness is at a bare minimum.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light bodied, medium-low carbonation.

Overall: Certainly not a bad beer, just not a very good Standard Bitter. Easy drinking, low alcohol, which is a plus. But the malt complexity is too low, as are the fruity esters from the yeast.

Dry-hopping Tips

Even though I've only been brewing for 2 & 1/2 years, dry-hopping seems to continue to grow in popularity among both homebrewers and commercial brewers. It's a technique that is well-recognized as adding an extra smack of hop aroma that you can't always get from late boil or whirlpool additions. It's very easy to do, and can really make your American IPAs and Pale Ales taste that much fresher and brighter. You'll see a lot of other beer styles lately that employ dry-hopping, including American Amber Ales, Pilsners, English Bitters, and various Belgian Ales.

The basic technique for dry-hopping is fairly easy... you dump the hops into the fermented beer. You don't have to sanitize them before doing so; infection is just something you don't have to worry about when dry-hopping, as a lot of sources note. When I'm weighing them out onto some aluminum foil, I'll spray the foil with a bit of sanitizer and wipe it down, but even that probably isn't necessary. Just try to keep oxygen contact with the beer as minimal as possible. Despite the general simplicity of dry-hopping, however, there are some things to clear up:

Whole hops vs. pellets
I've heard some people argue that hop pellets give a more grassy aroma to the beer, but I personally have never found this, and there's a lot of people out there, amateur and professional, that use pellets for dry-hopping. If you use pellets, you can just throw them into the fermenter... they'll turn into a green sludge soon enough, and eventually start to break-up and sink to the bottom. Giving the fermenter a twist back and forth can help speed this up, and will bring the hops more in contact with the beer. Whole hops work fine too, but they should be placed in a sanitized mesh-bag so that there isn't a lot of hop particles circulating through the beer. Makes them easier to remove, as well. Or, you could cold-crash at the end of the dry-hop to help clear the beer up.

Amount of hops to use
Obviously a personal preference. The more hops you dry-hop with, the bigger the aroma will be, and likely the longer it will last. Some brewers go really big and make dry-hopping the largest of their hop additions. For example, the Can You Brew It guys did a clone of the fantasic Lagunitas A Little Sumpin' Sumpin' over a year ago. That recipe had 59 g (2.1 oz) of different hop varieties throughout the boil. The dry-hop, however, is more than double that, at 129 g (4.6 oz)! I brewed that clone a while ago, and it did indeed have a huge hop aroma. However, even using 14-56 g (0.5-2 oz) of a single hop variety can add a really nice, bright hop aroma to the beer, especially when used in addition to a late/whirlpool addition in the boil.

Timing
When? Opinions vary... when primary and secondary fermentation is absolutely complete, and you're close to bottling/kegging? When fermentation is slowing down, and FG is 1 or 2 points away? You can try both options and see which suits you, but it's generally agreed that fermentation should be at least MOSTLY complete. If you added dry-hops when fermentation was very active, a lot of the aroma compounds would simply be blown off and released with the CO2 produced by the yeast. If you keg, adding hops after you've transferred to the keg is supposed to be a great option. A lot of brewers will add one hop addition to the keg for several days, and then add more hops when they're about ready to start drinking the beer, to allow for extra hop-freshness.

How long? Most agree that about 7-10 days is a good period to dry-hop - long enough to get a lot of extra aroma into your beer, but not too long where the hops may begin to take on an overly-grassy note. This is why I personally like to wait until the beer has been in primary for at least 2 weeks, so that the yeast have a chance to clean up their byproducts before bottling.

Primary vs. secondary

Most homebrewers know now that transferring to a secondary fermentor is usually thought to be unnecessary, except for certain circumstances. Dry-hopping is one such circumstance. Simply rack your beer into another carboy/bucket, and add the dry-hops then. This is generally recommended because it's believed that the yeast still in the beer can take up some of the hop aromatic compounds. However, I have added dry hops to the primary fermentor plenty of times and had good results. Yes, you end up with a lot of hop sludge with the yeast cake at the bottom, but if I don't plan on harvesting and reusing the yeast slurry, and will be bottling the beer within another week anyway, I don't see the harm in it. Remember that every time you move your beer, you're increasing the risk of infection and oxidation (especially if your secondary is leaving a lot of headspace), so you might as well keep it one place if you can!

Temperatures
This is a tricky topic, at least in terms of whether dry-hopping at fermentation temperatures vs. cold-crash temps actually makes a difference, aroma-wise. Dry-hopping warm (60-70 F) takes less time, but dry-hopping after cold-crashing (to ~32 F) will help hop particles settle out quicker and more efficiently. Some have suggested that cold-crashing the beer before dry-hopping also leads to more hop aroma, because the yeast will floc out quicker, and therefore won't be in suspension to rob the beer of those precious hop oils. I've seen recipes call for either, and the Epic Pale Ale clone I brewed two weeks ago calls for both: one addition for 5 days at fermentation temps, cold-crash the beer, and then add more hops for 5 days at the cold temperature. This approach does make sense, as a double-hit of dry-hopping would add more aroma.

One question that may need to be asked is if dry-hopping, like other brewing techniques, is sometimes OVER-used. Maybe. There doesn't seem to be a ceiling on hop taste or aroma like there is with bitterness, so using too much hops could be a possibility (although with today's increasing number of hopheads, I doubt it). I think it's more likely to be a problem if a brewer uses too many hop VARIETIES. While it's nice to mix different hops to see if/how they complement one another, when you get into 4+ hop varieties, the flavors and aromas can get a bit muddled. If you're just getting into dry-hopping, try limiting yourself to 1-2 different types of hops to start, and then work from there. It may be a good idea to split the beer into two batches after fermentation is complete, and dry-hop each batch differently, so you get a better feel for what separate hop varieties bring to the table.

Tasting/Recipe : Vielle Vache Sac

Biere de Garde is one of those beer styles that can be difficult to nail down. A style originating from France, it is a sweet, malt-forward beer with little hop character, other than some moderate-low bitterness to balance the sweetness. Fairly strong (up to ~8.5% ABV), it has some alcohol warmth, a light-to-moderate fruity ester presence, moderate-high carbonation and a musty/cellar character in the aromas and flavors. What can be confusing about this style is in terms of appearance - technically a BdG can be either blond, amber, or brown.

In my brief beer travels, I've been able to try several Biere de Gardes. It seems that the majority of the commercial examples are of the amber type (such as the more-widely available Jenlain Ambrée), but I have had at least one tasty blond version of the style - Saint Sylvestre 3 Monts. While not for everyone, I recommend trying at least one decent example; while there are similarities to several Belgian styles of beer, BdG definitely stands on its own.

I think I decided to try brewing BdG more on a whim than anything else. I was looking for a new style to try, and had a little to go on based on the few I had tried. Turns out it's a little trickier than I had thought, mainly because of that musty/cellar character that true BdGs from France have. These beers HAVE that character because of yeast and mold that are found in their area; homebrewers just don't really have a chance of replicating that, and our attempts will therefore taste "cleaner". Still, I wanted to give it a shot, so I turned to the old recipe-standby, Brewing Classic Styles.

The grist of this recipe has Pilsner malt as the majority, with about 20% Munich malt to give that toastiness appropriate to the style, as well as 5-6% Caravienne and just a touch (1 oz) of Black Patent for color. The mash temperature is quite low at 148 F - while BdG is a malt-forward beer, you want it to finish nice and dry. There is also a pound of table sugar (which I added after boiling in a bit of water, when fermentation began to slow) to help boost the gravity AND help dry out the beer further. The hops used are minimal in this recipe; basically just an addition of English hops at the 60-minute mark to provide a bit of bitterness (I aimed for the higher end of IBUs for the style).

As for the yeast, BCS suggests Wyeast 1338 European Ale*, described by Wyeast as giving full-bodied, malty beers. BdG is not a style listed on Wyeast's website under the 1338, but Farmhouse Ales by Phil Markowski mentions it specifically as being a very good yeast to use when brewing BdG. I'm going to go out of my way to reiterate what Wyeast says about this yeast - it is SLOW. I didn't have a problem with it STARTING slow, but fermentation continued for a long while; it was 4 weeks before I reached my FG of 1.008. And for most of this time, there was a thick, rocky, milkshake-like krausen on the beer. *Unfortunately, Wyeast has discontinued this strain from production.

Biere de Garde is translated as "beer that has been kept or lagered"; generally, this style is meant to be aged for some time before consuming. BCS says the longer the better; I believe I started drinking my homebrew version within a few months of bottling, and I've been trying a bottle here and there since. It's now been over 15 months since I brewed it; I wouldn't say the character has changed drastically in this time, but it definitely continues to mellow out a bit - the alcohol is hardly noticeable at all now, and the beer drinks very smooth.

Appearance: Pours with a moderate-sized, off-white, creamy head that hangs around for a really long time, before finally fading to a full-finger or so. Body is a deep amber/dark orange color, with excellent clarity.

Aroma: Mostly comprised of a light, malty sweetness with a bit of toast. A touch of spiciness that is probably some phenolic character - I wasn't filtering or treating my water for chlorine when I brewed this, unfortunately.

Taste: Medium sweet-maltiness, with a touch of toast and a little bit of caramel flavor. No hop flavor. No diacetyl. Medium-low hop bitterness in the dry finish. A hint of lingering phenolic, plastic flavor that is unwelcome.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied, with moderate-high carbonation. Touch of alcohol warmth. Very smooth.

Overall: The only real problem with this beer is the phenolic character mentioned in both the aroma and flavor. I assume this is due to Fredericton's chlorine-treated water, and not infection during brewing (I hope). I'm happy with what the yeast added in the flavor of this beer. Next time I'd bump up the Munich for some more toastiness, and soften the water by cutting it with some distilled. I'd also like to try racking the beer to secondary when fermentation was complete, and then lagering the beer for a month or so.

Recipe: (5.5 gallons, 73% efficiency): OG 1.069, FG 1.008, IBU 26.6, SRM 10, ABV 8.0%

Grains & Other:
4.09 kg Pilsner malt
1.18 kg Munich malt
340 g Caravienne malt
28 g Black Patent
454 g table sugar (added when fermentation began to slow)

Hops:
Fuggles - 28 g (3.75% AA adjusted for age) @ 60 min
Fuggles - 28 g (4.8% AA) @ 60 min

Misc.:
1/2 tsp yeast nutrient @ 15 min
1 tab Irish Moss @ 15 min

Yeast: Wyeast 1338 European Ale (PD Nov. 22/10, with a 2 L starter)

- Brewed Dec 20th, 2010, by myself. 90-minute mash with 17.4 L of strike water, mashed in at 148 F. Sparged with ~5.25 gallons of 180 F water for final volume of 7.25 gallons in the kettle. 90-minute boil. Chilled to 66 F with immersion chiller. Poured into Better Bottle. Pitched yeast at 64 F, aerated by shaking for several minutes before and after.

21/12/10 - 18/1/11 - Fermentation was quite active for the first few days; added table sugar boiled in water and cooled when airlock bubbling started to slow. Temp reached 71 F on second day, was mostly in the high-60s afterwards. Thick krausen for at least 3 weeks. Gravity after 2 weeks was still at 1.017. Finally reached 1.008 after about 4 weeks in primary. Bottled with 133 g table sugar, targeting 2.75 vol CO2.