Since the blogosphere is abuzz over whether Barack Obama is a sexist, and whether the word “periodical” has anything to do with menstruation (hint: it doesn’t), I’ve decided to disengage from the conversation: I’ve said my piece over at brendancalling and that’s that. It’s a sad day when progressive and liberal bloggers act like Freepers.
Instead, I’m trying a new style: altbier.
The Germans are known for their crisp lagers, but lager yeast didn’t come along until the mid-1800s (first used in America in Philadelphia PA, near where the remains of Ortliebs Brewery stands today). Before that, like everyone else, the Germans made ales. Alt (or “old”) is one of the few remaining German ale styles, yet like lagers, it’s conditioned at colder temperatures. The cold temperatures give the beer a certain clarity and smoothness.
I’m not sure if I have the patience to age mine for up to 4 months, but I’m not too worried about it: the recipes I’ve found on line have secondary fermentation times that begin with as little as 2 weeks. Join me below for this experimental recipe…
I plan to use:
1/2 pound Crystal Malt(60 Lovibond)
1/2 pound Munich malt (11 Lovibond)
4 oz chocolate or black patent malt
6-9 pounds of pale malt extract
1 oz Perle hops, at 1 hour
1 tsp Irish Moss, at 15 minutes
1 oz hallertau, at 5 minutes
Wyeast 1007, German Ale Yeast
Boil three gallons of water the night before brewing and let cool in the fermenter.
Steep the crystal, munich, and chocolate malts in 3 gallons of 165 degree water for half an hour.
Add your extract and bring to a rolling boil. Add the perle hops and set the timer for 1 hour. Follow the rest of the directions for hops and irish moss additions.
After the hour is up, cool the wort to 70 degrees as quickly as possible, and add to the fermenter (you may have to dump out a little of the cool water). Pitch the yeast and allow to ferment for about a week.
Rack to the secondary fermenter, and ferment another 2 weeks to four months at about 50 degrees or lower (that extra fridge comes in handy here). Bottle or keg.
I think this one is going to be a truly special beer. Tomorrow we tap our ESB. My tummy can’t wait!
definitely an antidote to primary season bickering. 🙂
Do you have pictures of your wort chiller? I always thought that was one of the cooler (pun intended) parts of the brewing process.
funny you should mention that because I think next week is going to focus a lot on equipment, including pictures.
i may go over the C02 system as well.
i think we’re going to have a party again in another month or so, you guys should all come by (including CBtE and CBtY).
We’ll be there!
sounds good! I haven’t brewed alt either. I was in Dusseldorf only once (that’s the home of this style) and don’t really remember what it should taste like.
I’d cut the chocolate malt to 2oz to keep this in the amber range instead of brown but that won’t affect taste much. [I entered it in beersmith to be sure and even with 4 oz you’d be within the style guideline for alt – just].
I brewed yesterday, an IPA that I might name “What Hop Shortage?”. 7oz of hops! My Firestone clone is bottled waiting to condition and I’m happily drinking Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter
Our next batch we’re going to splurge on the hops too. We may actually buy an extra keg, because we plan to dry hop.
My supply guy gave me a tip about weighting a sachet bag of hops with a couple of marbles, and tying the packet about halfway down the outflow pipe. Force carbonate and then put in the basement for a month or two.
where are you located? at some point the lefty beer bloggers have to have a session. There are home brewers at balloon juice too.
i’m in California so I don’t think we’ll be getting together soon. (you’re in Philly like BooMan, right?)
I’ll make sure I have some pictures ready for next week’s equipment discussion.
you do all grain right?
if so, let’s see the lauter tun. I need to figure out how to make one of those for summer, when I start doing all-grain.
In another month or so, hops rhizomes are available. we’re trellising them in the backyard. I’m SO excited!
I’ll get some pictures of my gear for next week, but here are some links.
I have a B3-500 sculpture , so the mash/lauter tun is a 9 gal stainless kettle, it’s the middle tier of the three. I bought the false bottom they sell with this, but have now made a copper pipe manifold like Palmer talks about in How To Brew. The advantage of this is that I can directly heat the MLT if I want to do a step mash.
you may be thinking about the igloo cooler MLT that lots of homebrewers use. How To Brew and dennybrew both have good discussions of this. This limits you to a simple infusion mash, but that works great for most styles anyway. I batch sparge as described at dennybrew.
one big advantage of the fancy 3-level systems is everything flows by gravity and you minimize lifting and you minimize chances of spilling hot water. This is a big safety issue IMO. Dennybrew talks about pouring hot water by the pitcher into the MLT, and I guess he’s survived this, but I like just opening the valve.
That.
Is.
AWESOME.
My girlfriend’s gonna go nuts seeing that. she may insist on buying one.