Kaiser
Well-Known Member
I'm not quite happy with the aroma and finish of my beers. For the lagers, in which I use only bittering hops or only little amounts of flavoring hops, I don't get much aroma from the beer. I feel that it is rather empty compared to a commercial Helles or Maerzen. And the finish still feels a little to harsh. And there is this pesky slight dustiness that I'm getting occasionally from my beers.
So this weekend I want to give a Helles a try and make sure that I pay attention to all the details that I know could make a difference and which I can take care of w/o bying new equipment:
- use a heated step infusion mash with a 57 *C (137 F) dough in and a 2 step saccrification rest. This is pretty much as authentic German as it gets and this would be a first for me since it doesn't really fit my brew-house. But I can make it work.
- when batch sparging don't drain the wort below grain level. This is basically in response to the BYO article about sparging
- fix the manifold seal for my MLT. Recently I started pulling in air through this.
- add hops before the hot break and maybe even FWH the batch. Hopefully this smoothens out the finish
- 90 min boil
- DMS rest. When I have an imported Helles it generally has a tad of a sweet aroma. It doesn't smell like the typical DMS aroma to me, but I could imagine that it is DMS which is barely at the aroma threshold. So far I have been chilling my beers below 100 within 10 - 20 min. No Commercial brewery that has a whirlpool can do that and I want to know if this is the reason why my beers have such a clean (=empty) aroma. I'll have to read up on average time that commercial wort is spending hot.
- 12+ hr post chill whirlpool settling. For that I will chill the wort to ~48F and keep it in an ice bath for the next 12 hrs before racking to the fermenter. This is supposed to get rid of about 60% of the cold break. Commercial brewies may have settling tanks for this. And since I don't have a conical I have to go this route.
It's a lot of changes, but If the beer really comes out different (and hopefully better) I could start eliminating one extra step after another to figure out what is actually important.
Kai
So this weekend I want to give a Helles a try and make sure that I pay attention to all the details that I know could make a difference and which I can take care of w/o bying new equipment:
- use a heated step infusion mash with a 57 *C (137 F) dough in and a 2 step saccrification rest. This is pretty much as authentic German as it gets and this would be a first for me since it doesn't really fit my brew-house. But I can make it work.
- when batch sparging don't drain the wort below grain level. This is basically in response to the BYO article about sparging
- fix the manifold seal for my MLT. Recently I started pulling in air through this.
- add hops before the hot break and maybe even FWH the batch. Hopefully this smoothens out the finish
- 90 min boil
- DMS rest. When I have an imported Helles it generally has a tad of a sweet aroma. It doesn't smell like the typical DMS aroma to me, but I could imagine that it is DMS which is barely at the aroma threshold. So far I have been chilling my beers below 100 within 10 - 20 min. No Commercial brewery that has a whirlpool can do that and I want to know if this is the reason why my beers have such a clean (=empty) aroma. I'll have to read up on average time that commercial wort is spending hot.
- 12+ hr post chill whirlpool settling. For that I will chill the wort to ~48F and keep it in an ice bath for the next 12 hrs before racking to the fermenter. This is supposed to get rid of about 60% of the cold break. Commercial brewies may have settling tanks for this. And since I don't have a conical I have to go this route.
It's a lot of changes, but If the beer really comes out different (and hopefully better) I could start eliminating one extra step after another to figure out what is actually important.
Kai