Double Bock this weekend

[Barley Water]

It is now time for me to brew the last of my three lagers in a row. I started with a Helles then did a Munich Dunkel and now for the finale, a Double Bock (I used the same yeast on each beer for this will be the 3rd generation). I have not yet settled on a formulation. The recipie I used last year needs some work so I am open to suggestion.

There are a few things I know I am going to try to get done with this beer:
1) I want this beer to be big, starting gravity will be about 1.080.
2) The beer needs to be almost chewy so I am going to mash for body at around 155F.
3)It's all about the malt so I will use a very high percentage of Munich malt and also some aromatic malt both to increase the malty flavor and also to increase the malt impression in the aroma.
4)This beer will also be a double decoction with two 30 minute boils. Additionally, I will pull off about a quart or so of first runnings and boil them down on the stove to try and get as much of that newly baked pumpernickel flavor as I possibly can.
5)Although this style is malty, I want it to attenuate pretty well so that the beer is not cloying. To that end, I am building up my yeast so that there is a very high cell count when I finally pitch the yeast. I don't want the boys to poop out before the job is done. I will also heavily aeroate the cool wort with straight O2 and maybe add some yeast nutrients to help things along. I think it might be best to keep the percentage of crystal type malts fairly low to avoid a really sweet end product.
6)Finally, I want to avoid esters which can be a real problem when dealing with high gravity worts like this (very good in English beers but bad in German lagers). I think based on experience I can ferment as low as 48F without causing problems and I am hoping that the big yeast starter will help with this also. I will also rack the cool wort off the cold break once it goes through my chiller and I will pump ice water through the chiller rather than just using water at ground water temperature. This helps with the cold break, then I can get it out of my fermenter.

Ok, so my question here is first of all, am I missing anything? Also, does anybody have any good ideas in terms of formulation or any neat tricks to make this type of beer better. I am hoping that this stuff will come into it's prime just after the holiday season (about when the bills come in) and in time to enter it into our biggest contest which is around the middle of March.

Thanks for the help guys, after this, I am going back to ale brewing to make life just a little easier.

[Whorst]

I've heard that a triple decoction mash will improve malt flavor even with fully modified malt. That along with the correct water for the style and you should be good. What yeast are you using?

[delboy]

Seems like you have most of the bases covered, as a lager brewing neophyte i don't think i could add much.

How long do you intend to keep it in the primary?, are you going to do a D-rest and like the previous person asked what yeast is it you are using?

[Barley Water]

I will have to check my brewing book, I can't remember which strain I have going. It is one of the German strains appropriate for the various Munich lagers though. I remember selecting it because it was one of the better attenuators in the group. Because all three lagers I am doing have very low hop rates, I think they taste much better if they get pretty dry. I really like malty but fully attenuated beers, it keeps the beer from getting really cloying and kind of flabby tasting if that makes any sense.

I will be doing a diacetyl rest after I get the beer in the secondary, I don't want to start running the temperature up with alot of dead yeast cells in the fermentor. I have never really had problems with diacety anyway so I figure a couple of days at 65F should take care of any potential problems. As far as time in the primary, I guess I will just play it by ear. After a week, I start checking the beer daily and once I see activity slow down I rack it to secondary (I ferment in glass so I can see what is going on). How long the beer stays in secondary depends on alot of things, especially space considerations. After a couple of weeks, once the diacetyl rest is done I will start dropping the temperature. Once the beer looks good and I have an open keg I will keg and force carbonate when it is convient. I want this beer to sit around for quite some time before I actually start drinking it maybe 10 weeks or so?

As far as doing a triple decoction, I guess after an hour of stirring boiling grains I just get to the point where I say "enough is enough". I am hoping that boiling down a quart of so of first runnings will make up for my laziness. Anyhow, I though I read somewhere that the 3rd decoction was the thin part of the mash anyway so maybe boiling the first running is damn near a triple anyway, what do you think? On top of that, I am putting a little aromatic malt in the grist so hopefully that will help this whole situation also.

[delboy]

I'd be tempted just to go with the standard triple decoct, since as you say the third is a relatively straight forward boiling of the thin part of the mash. As far as i can see you woudn't need to boil down the first runnings then.

The reason i ask about the time in primary is because lately i've seen quite a bit of debate about the merits of leaving the beer in the primary for longer (jamil etc). I wonder would the same concept hold true for a lager also

[Barley Water]

I guess I missed the debate about leaving beer longer in the primary. I thought that is was always best to get the beer off the trub and hop gunk as quickly as possible, is that not correct?

As far as the 3rd decoction, you convinced me, I will do a 3rd pull with the thin part. It should actually be a little easier than boiling down the first runnings, thanks for that.

[delboy]

I guess I missed the debate about leaving beer longer in the primary. I thought that is was always best to get the beer off the trub and hop gunk as quickly as possible, is that not correct?

As far as the 3rd decoction, you convinced me, I will do a 3rd pull with the thin part. It should actually be a little easier than boiling down the first runnings, thanks for that.

Its seems Jamil (he of many award winning beers and mr malty pitching calculator fame) has pretty much dispensed with secondaries and he contends that far from getting off flavours his beers have improved.

Some suggest that off flavours from the trub etc is much the same as HSA and the likes ie very overplayed, everyones heard of it but nobodies experinced it.
Anything up to a month on the primary yeast cake seems to be absolutely fine.
Im inclined to agree with this thinking, but thats maybe because im lazy and it suits me to think that i don't need to use a secondary/clearing vessel

[oblivious]

Jamil advocates a long primary fermentation because it remove the need to secondary for standard gravity beers, lagers your still going to have to secondary them to lager them, I would presum

[delboy]

Jamil advocates a long primary fermentation because it remove the need to secondary for standard gravity beers, lagers your still going to have to secondary them to lager them, I would presum

Yeah, i think youre right on that OB, but im just wondering should we be in a rush to get it off that big priamry yeast cake and into the secondary or could we afford to leave it on it for a few weeks to a month???

Who knows, might make the difference between an award winner beer and one that isn't

[oblivious]

i don't see why the majority of the fermentation to be done in two weeks, maybe then transfer to secondary

[Barley Water]

That is very interesting, I sometimes wonder how much of what I do is related to some tradition thought up by some half-drunk homebrewer that is actually just a waste of time and effort (or God forbid, actually detremental to the beer). I guess I will need to test Mr. Jamil's theory myself but I think I will not do testing on a double bock, maybe a pale ale or something less labor intensive.

[delboy]

I think a lot of what we do has been determined by commercial brewing practices, a brewery couldn't afford to let the beer sit about in the primary for a month even if it does produce a superior product. Time is money and they need to get it ready in the shortest amont of time.
As homebrewers we aren't under the same constraints so leaving a brew sitting in the fermenter for a month is no biggy and won't have our accountants tearing their hair out

[mysterio]

I asked the brewers at Paulaner if they did decoctions anymore and they said no. However this was the Paulaner brewpub and not the main brewery, so i've no idea if they do it for Salvator.

How long are you lagering for? Does it take longer for these bigger lagers?

[Barley Water]

I would like to lager this stuff at least 10-12 weeks but it maybe even longer than that. It seems like someplace I read that for every six gravity points you should lager a week (or some such formula as that). Anyway, I will try to stay out of it for as long as possible and I have enough beer to last until the new year right now so I should be able to do it. For whatever it's worth, I did an Octoberfest late last February which I am just now starting to drink (just like the German monks in the old days with their ice caves). It came out very well attenuated and the lagering pretty much knocked off all the rough edges, it is very smooth. There is no way though that I am normally keeping beer around that long, it takes up way too much cool space and keeps me from brewing other styles.

[Barley Water]

Well, I brewed this stuff this weekend. My arm is still sore from stirring boiling grain (for a couple of hours at least altogether I figure). I followed Delboy's direction and did a triple decoction. I missed my gravity so maybe this is more of a bock than a double bock but what the heck. When I get close the the capacity of my masthtun, I frequently get lousy efficiency and this weekend was no different. Other than that though, everything went well so the beer should come out pretty good. I pitched so much yeast (which I fed a couple of times late last week so the "boys" were really fired up) that I had a 3" head after just a couple of hours. It did seem like I brewed forever, it took me 4 1/2 hours just to get the mashing done, I think I am going to do a bunch of ales for a while, you have just got to love that single infusion stuff.