brewday 8/9/07 uerige altbier

[mb]

brew no3, a try at my favourite beer.

brew length 5L
Munich 910g
Vienna 365g
Crystal 133g
Saaz 25g

scaled down from graham wheeler's brew classic european beers at home.

3rd time unlucky with this one, i forgot to close the tap between running off the first batch of sparge water and adding the second and ran 3 litres swiftly through before i realised. so i've got a murky and weak wort, i don't think i'll be getting anywhere near the 1048 OG. but, who knows, weak altbier might be ok.


you live and learn, turning taps off goes onto my checklist.

[subsub]

you live and learn, turning taps off goes onto my checklist.

We've all been there m8, btw brew looks tasty, have a goodun

[Vossy1]

Good luck mb

[DRB]

How did the brew day go .

[mb]

looks like i got away with it, OG was 1042. i did up my grain bill 25% as insurance as i've no idea what my efficiency is yet and i figured it's easier to water down a wort that's too strong than it is to strengthen a wort that's too weak (and in a 5L brew it's not even a quid's worth of extra grain). whatever it was, it seems that all grain is more forgiving than the books would have you believe.

some pics,

the boil,


break material, on my first attempt this amount of muck worried me - but it only takes 15 mins to settle after which i siphoned into another demijohn.i racked the bitter and mild i made last week into secondary fermentation a couple of days ago and was pleasantly surprised at how clear they were.



seems to be fermenting happily,

[steve_flack]

What yeast did you use for that one?

[mb]

What yeast did you use for that one?

safale s04 - so not authentic. the books say to use german ale yeast, i don't know what the difference would be to an english ale yeast, maybe i'll try to get hold of some german for next time.

[steve_flack]

It will probably taste like an English Bitter then. Apparently the best dried yeast to use for these is K-97 but that's only sold here in 500g blocks. You can get it from Craftbrewer in Australia in smaller packs though. Alternatively I'd be inclined to use Nottingham - it won't be an alt but it will be nearer. One problem with genuine alt yeasts though is that they are VERY bad flocculators.

[Aleman]

One problem with genuine alt yeasts though is that they are VERY bad flocculators.

Thats the reason for the long storage at low temperatures, The lagering of the ale helps the yeast to drop out - and also leads to the name Alt or Old.

[steve_flack]

and also leads to the name Alt or Old.

I though the reason was that it was the old way of brewing (lager beers being the new way).