First All Grain - Please Check My Recipe/Method!

Hey all,

As a birthday gift for my dad, I'm trying to put together a clone of his favorite lager that was discontinued a number of years ago. Sleeman's Silver Creek Lager was the first beer I tried that didn't make me gag (all those years ago), but ironically is something I'll avoid now that I've had much, much better lagers all over the world.

I'd love some critiques on this recipe as well as my proposed method. It'll be my first attempt at all-grain. My last partial mash was bizarre; I ended up at 1.099 when I was shooting for 1.075. Lost my notes in a flood, but c'est la vie. Hope this one goes better.


Type: All grain
Size: 12 liters
Bitterness: 17 IBU
OG: 1.054
FG: 1.016

Alcohol: 4.9% v/v (3.8% w/w)

Grain:
2kg 500g American 2-row
250g Belgian biscuit
500g American Vienna

Mash: 65% efficiency
Mash all grains in 8L of water for 60 minutes between 66°C (150°F) and 67°C (154°F).
Strike temperature should be 73°C (163°F). Squeeze all liquid from grains.

Remove grain bag from pot and soak in separate pot of 5L of water
at same temperature as mash for 10 minutes. Squeeze all liquid from
grains.

Pour this into the brew pot and bring to boil.

Boil: 60 minutes
Add 1/2 TSP Irish Moss (re-hydrated for 24 hours) to boil 10 minutes
from end of boil.

At end of boil, add water to total 12L and chill with IC.

Rack into primary through grain bag to strain cold break/moss/hop
material.

Hops:
14g Willamette (5% AA, 60 min.)
3g Willamette (5% AA, 30 min.)
3g Willamette (5% AA, 15 min.)

Yeast:
Wyeast 2007. Make 2L starter 2 weeks ahead of time; ferment at 10°C.

Schedule:
Ferment for 2-3 weeks at 9-13°C. Rack into secondary after 3
consistent SG readings.

Lager for an additional 6 weeks in secondary at 4-5°C.

Bottle condition 2-4 weeks.

Thoughts appreciated!

- Budista

Well I dont do all grain yet, but I dont think you want to squeeze the liquid out. Ive read somewhere where that will extract alot of tannins, which you dont want.

If you're doing a brew-in-a-bag and you're squeezing all the liquid from the grains, you'll get a lot more than 65% efficiency. I usually get 75-80% with that method from a single infusion, more still if I'm using decoctions.

I'm kind of sick of hearing about the tannin bogeyman. The main factors influencing tannin extraction are pH and temperature. If your temps are over 170 and you pH is over 6 you're more likely to extract tannins. At mash temperature and under mash conditions, your pH and temperature will be under this threshold.

Wait... that explains why my first partial-mash was so bloody high. I did exactly what I'm describing here with less water and grain (2 gallon test batch) and got about 75% efficiency (instead of the planned 60%). I was convinced I had messed up big time, but it's good to know why I was so far off.

When you say decoction, what do you mean? I'm really quite fuzzy on that whole process. Does that refer to my half-assed 'sparge' (tea-bagging the squeezed grains in another pot of water for 10 minutes), then boiling it and adding it to my main kettle?

I'm going to keep everything the same (as I've already bought the grain and yeast), just add more water. More beer in the end can't hurt!

- Budista

Decoction is where you draw off a thick portion of the mash, boil it, and return it to the main mash to raise the temperature. I do that with multi-temp mashes, although some people think you get the same results with just hot water infusions. The good thing about decoction is that you get to keep your mash at your target grain/water ratio, whereas with multi infusions you're going up and up with your water volume.

You're trying to boil the grains with just enough liquid to keep them moving and not scorching. The amount of mash pulled out depends on how much you need to raise the temp. Decoction is a traditional German method, although most big breweries in Germany just do water infusions or direct heat nowadays.

When you're boiling the decoction, a few things are happening. You're breaking up the starches with heat, you're increasing the solubility of water (solubility goes up with heat), so the water can more easily dissolve the starches, and you're creating melanoidins. Melanoidins make beer "malty." Think of a good Marzen/Oktoberfest type beer.

RE:tannins, this gets interesting. The solubility of water (which is affected by temperature) affects tannin extraction, so as the water can dissolve compounds easier, tannins can be more easily extracted. Yet tannins are not a defining character of traditional German lagers. This makes me think that pH is even more critical to tannin extraction than temperature. The chemistry involved is just barely in my ability to understand, so I'm just guessing there.

I use multi-rest mashes with decoctions on almost all my beers, and have never had a tannin issue. I probably am extracting some small amount of tannin during the boil, which is probably masked by the increased maltiness of the beer.

So, empirically, I can say tannin extraction isn't an issue, even with boiling temperatures, if you observe proper mash pH.