Octoberfest Franken-beer

I started out to make this beer with leftover ingredients, so no real thought went into planning the recipe or anything like that - Most everything is made from leftovers. I put the word Octoberfest in the recipe title, but don't get the idea that its authentic or even is supposed to be an attempt at authentic - really the only thing it has in common with an Octoberfest is that I first made it in March and the taste is spot on like Flying Dog Dogtoberfest Marzen seasonal.

I made this as a partial mash with Extract, mostly leftover ingredients and recycled yeast - but the result is off the chain.

Ingredients:

Malts:
3 1/2 Pounds Light Munich
1 Pound Vienna
1/4 Pound Cara Aroma
1/2 Pound CaraPils

Mashed at about 150F for a little over an hour, then sparged till I got just under 7 gallons in the brew pot. While the wort was coming to a boil, added the following extract:

3.6 Pounds Extra Light LME
1/2 Pound Light DME
1/2 Pound Rice Syrup Solids

Hops were added as follows:

1/4 oz Nuggett at 60 Minutes
1/4 oz Hallertaur at 30 Minutes
1/4 oz Hallertaur at 15 Minutes

Cooled the wort down into the 60s and racked it onto a yeast cake of WLP810 San Francisco Lager. It fermented on my back porch in the shade getting as high as 50F during the day, and down to 40 at night. If it got colder than 40, I brought it inside till morning - other than that didn't really make much effort to control the temperature.

Did not perform a Diacetyl rest, but I will likely do so next time. Not that the beer has any Diacetyl taste, WLP810 ferments very clean and crisp and is pretty temperature tolerant.

After two weeks racked it into a secondary for a couple more weeks outside then moved it inside for 3 months in the fridge. I bottled the beer 4th of July weekend, and just started drinking it this afternoon and was absolutely delighted with how it turned out. Beautiful light amber color, wonderful smell, terrific malt taste and just bitter enough. Kind of a strong brew, but not so strong that you won't be able to down 3-4 bottles in a session, and I'm on my second session of the day - Really is a terrific beer, I don't like to brag, but I'm feeling pretty good about my beer making ability right about now.

Going to do my best to put the rest of it back in the fridge and drink something else for the next few weeks and save this beer for September-October/traditional Octoberfest time and drink it on the weekends for college football.

Mutilated1 said:

After two weeks racked it into a secondary for a couple more weeks outside then moved it inside for 3 months in the fridge. I bottled the beer 4th of July weekend, and just started drinking it this afternoon and was absolutely delighted with how it turned out.

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Did you have to add yeast to the beer before you bottled it? You had this one sitting in the cold a long time before it hit the bottle!

I'm about to make my first lager, so I am curious as to when in this process I should put it in the bottle for bottle carbonating.

Thanks!

no I didn't add any yeast when I bottled it

Interesting recipe.

What part of it is "Franken"...???

homebrewer_99 said:

Interesting recipe.

What part of it is "Franken"...???

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Franken as in "Made for a bunch of leftover pieces" like Frankenstein's monster.