BIAB lager recipe?

[john_drummer]

does anyone have a BIAB recipe for lager, in the style of Becks/Stella/Budvar?

I have a hunch it would use Pilsner malt & saaz and/or hallertauer hops, and obviously a lager yeast, but as for weights I haven't a clue.
I'd be looking at a final volume of around 19-20 litres and my boiling pan takes up to 32 litres

thanks in advance

[Bribie]

For those styles of beer I reckon you should go right down the middle traditional. Starting with the water, if you have soft water where you are, then that's good and I'd go all Pilsener malt and Saaz hops, and a Czech style yeast. On the other hand if your water is a tad hard, I'd go more the German route with, again, all Pilsener malt and Hallertau / Hersbrucker / Saphir hops and more of a German style yeast.

Soft water recipe could be:

Test lager
Recipe Specs
----------------
Batch Size (L): 20.0
Total Grain (kg): 4.500
Total Hops (g): 60.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.053 (°P): 13.1
Final Gravity (FG): 1.013 (°P): 3.3
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.21 %
Colour (SRM): 2.8 (EBC): 5.5
Bitterness (IBU): 31.0 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 74
Boil Time (Minutes): 75

Grain Bill
----------------
4.500 kg Pilsner Premium Weyermann (100%)

Hop Bill
----------------
60.0 g Saaz Pellet (3.6% Alpha) @ 75 Minutes (Boil) (3 g/L)

Single step Infusion at 64°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Wyeast 2001 - Urquell Lager

...........................................

Now that's half the story, You would really need to ferment the above at around 12 degrees for at least 2 weeks, then run off into a second vessel and lager at as close to freezing as possible for at least 3 weeks, then bottle or keg.

[EoinMag]

Or treat your water and do whichever......

[john_drummer]

Cheers Bribie, much appreciated. My water is soft so that looks like a goer

[john_drummer]

30 minutes into the mash...

and done. 1050 at 20deg, 19 litres in the bucket

[john_drummer]

temperature stick-on thing has shown the temperature to go from 16-18deg but never above that, and the airlock has more or less stopped gurgling, so I took a gravity measurement - 1004. That's going to be one strong brew!

What next?

I have a few questions about Lagering

1) My greenhouse is currently showing 4 degrees celsius but if we get a milder spell it could go up to 10 or more - but this is the only cool place I have. Is this too cool? especially considering it'll get much colder overnight

2) how long should I leave it in there?

3) should I just move the primary FV in there, or should I rack it into a secondary, or even bottle it?

Now that's half the story, You would really need to ferment the above at around 12 degrees for at least 2 weeks, then run off into a second vessel and lager at as close to freezing as possible for at least 3 weeks, then bottle or keg.

doh! didn't read the above! please ignore

[Bribie]

For lagering, if you can keep it at 4° that would be great, a lot of guy's fridges only go down to about that anyway - it's the resting / clearing that really counts, although the lower the temperature the better. So don't panic if it goes up a bit from there - as long as nothing is going to get into the brew then you should be good.

[john_drummer]

cheers bribie, it'll be going into the cold greenhouse at the weekend

[john_drummer]

ok, so the greeenhouse is starting to warm up, time to bottle this.

One question - it's waaay stronger than I intended, is there anything I can do about that without making it taste "watered down"? I had a sample from the lagering bucket earlier and it's ok, but a very strong taste.
Mrs_d says it tastes "soapy" but I put that down to her uneducated palate
To me it doesn't taste off or anything, just a bit too much like special brew.

OG was 1050, fg 1004 which I understand works out at 6% ABV. Anything I can do now to take it down? Or am I stuck with homebrewed tennents super?

[Bribie]

Quite a few commercial breweries ferment over-gravity and "adjust to sales strength" before packaging. Well that sounds better than "watering down" I've done it myself when I had to get a brew below 4% ABV for a particular competition, worked fine.

You need to make sure that the water you use is de-oxygenated and sterile. Either use boiled water that you've sealed up in a container and allowed to cool without contact with oxygen, or use cheap supermarket fizzy water - I seem to remember from high school that there's only so much gas that water can take up and in the case of carbonated water there's little or no oxygen in the product as it's crowded out by the CO2 during manufacture, or probably removed first anyway.
I'd check the list on the bottle to make sure it's not too minerally.

[john_drummer]

cheers Bribie, I'll give that a try on a small sample. simple sparkling supermarket water you say?

[Bribie]

Yup, head for Aldi

[mayersbrew]

Tesco table water does the job and very cheap. I think t was 15p for a 2l a bottle. I use it for my brewing water. Ive never tested it for softness.

[john_drummer]

Aldi 4x 2 litres sparkling water was 99p. not quite as cheap as the Tesco one but it'll do.

diluted from 14 litres at 6%abv to 18 litres at somewhere around 4.5% - 5% if my maths are right. Still tastes ok to me, mrs won't touch it

[john_drummer]

finally bottled today, used a full tsp sugar per bottle for priming to give it that lager fizz. fingers crossed...