Dark Lager or 3rd January Porter (Baltic version w pics)

[Andris]

Made one darker brew on January 3rd,

4.30 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (3.5 EBC) Grain 80.68 %
0.47 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 30L (30.0 EBC) Grain 8.82 %
0.30 kg Munich Malt - 10L (16.0 EBC) Grain 5.63 %
0.26 kg Black (Patent) Malt (1300.0 EBC) Grain 4.88 %
15.00 gm Magnum [15.20 %] (60 min) Hops 24.6 IBU
10.00 gm Hallertauer [6.00 %] (15 min) Hops 3.2 IBU
0.24 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
20g Saflager W34/70

Idea was to make a dark lager with medium body, malty aroma and slight bitter end, I planned to make 18 liters and since I had some new equipment and wanted to try new mash profile, I went for efficiency 60% in my calculations - worst case scenario, I end up with more beer (which was the case), so here's how it went:

Started with grain bill in my new shiny 46l MLT


heating water on ceramic top for mash - VERY slow... VERY slow....


while water is heating.. time for some homebrew!


slightly underreached mash temp - by 0.7C, but I think its good cause I'm not used to this new big box (old one was 20l), went through all phases for this one - protein res, sacc rest and mash out,
tested wort for conversion using iodine solution


I cant describe the smell.. whole house smelled delicious malty-bready... I hope this pic will give idea:


Returning first runnings back


After some 2-3l wort runs clear


Draining mash tun. my mash profile was on the thin end, without sparging, I was hoping to get all in first run, so I ended up with about 35l of total volume


Helowa long process, took about 30min to run it all down, ended up with 25l of brew (whoa, ok, 2l dead space, 8l grain absorbtion on 5.3kg grain bill??)

Sad thing is, I have to throw spent grain out

while pot is on the stove, checking my new homemade wort chiller - cleaning and sanitizing


finally, hot break! damn, it takes sooo long to get this one to the boil on ceramic top...


making sure I have everything ready to sanitize:


when boil is done, time to chill the wort.. in my lavvy (thats the only spot where I can conveniently get cold water without destroying half of kitchen, summer version is from the pump in the ground)


aeration....


and finally, taking gravity reading


to sum it up, I was planning to get 18 liters of 1.05x brew, ended up with 22.5l of 1.050.

Wort tasted like... cold coffee with sugar - very crisp and nice taste.

Its now been for 6 days in primary at 10C - still bubbling, crausen just started to fall off, think of moving it in couple days for D-rest...

[WishboneBrewery]

Great pictures

[Andris]

Well, after month in the bottles... tastes yummy! not too dry, not too sweet and with lovely bit bitter aftertaste:



was very long fermentation process - It was active during whole 3 weeks and only then subsided. Fermented with Saflager 34/70(or somethin) at 10C, had 3 day D-rest at week3, bottled in 4 weeks.

[monkeyboy]

looks like a good brewday, and that pint at the end looks great. Haven't tried a lager yet but am itching to give it a go.

[Andris]

I think, while its still reasonably cold and easy to maintain lager temps (I dont have dedicated fridge for fermenters... yet), its worth a try porter/dark brew with lager yeast - tastes different, not worse or better, but different I think, lager yeast makes it all bit cleaner bringing malts to the "front".

A friend of mine suggested, that porters brewed with lager yeast, should be fermented at ~15C, to emphasize the lager yeast notes, but I like it "clean".

all and all, the idea behind this brew was to have a full malt taste and aroma (hence very little aroma hops) with decent bitter end to compensate for sweetness - I think, its perfect - when you taste it, you have notes of chocolate, rye bread, coffee, bit burnt notes, sweet and nice and ending with nice dry finish.

the only minus of this brew is... that it dries very fast - I have almost finished one crate just by sampling