Oktoberfest Brew Day!!!

Cannot wait. I was supposed to be doing it this morning, but my hangover and afternoon company has pushed it back to the mid afternoon. No prob. My yeast has been started, my top off water chilled, and I have room in my kegger for a true lager-style fermentation. Noble hops, German malts and double decoction mashing. All I'm missing is the month of March, a couple caves and some leiderhosen!!!!!

Wish me luck!!

Good Luck! I'll be interested to here about the brew day when you are done!

You brewing yet, how's it look?

I'm brewing mine this Thursday. I won't be doing the starter until Tuesday so I figure 48 hours for a nice big population boom.

Mine is up next, after the yeast is done with some more schwarzbier.

Ugh, I'm sure the beer will taste fine but my efficiency sucked - 59%, pulled 72% last time I did a double decoct. I'm not sure what the deal was.

I lost a gallon more water to the system than expected, so when I went to immerse my coil I didn't have the surface area I wanted so I pitched right @ 60°. My goal was mid 50s. This one is fine though because it'll be close to 50°F by the time fermentation gets going anyways in 12-24 hours.

Oh and during my crash cooling my thermometer broke. Sweet!!! The mercury bulb didn't break thank god. I triple filtered to get any glass out of the system.

I just brewed a 1.055 Oktoberfest yesterday too.

I decided to not do a decoction and just threw some Melanoidin malt in there as an attempt to compensate.

I lost a gallon more water to the system than expected, so when I went to immerse my coil I didn't have the surface area I wanted so I pitched right @ 60°. My goal was mid 50s. This one is fine though because it'll be close to 50°F by the time fermentation gets going anyways in 12-24 hours.

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It's difficult for me to get mine into the 50s so I just put it in the carboy @ about 75 F and set it in the fridge for a few hours and agitate it a few times and then pitch the yeast. Had a nice krausen this morning.

I like the double decoct because you can be less anal with temps. In fact next time I do this method I feel I don't need a thermometer. Strike water is hot enough when I can no longer hold my finger in it. That'll be like 125-130. And I know it'll be cool enough to pitch because I can tell when something is chilly.

I need to re-work my system's overall efficiency. If I had enough mash water I bet my brewhouse efficiency would have been higher, my hop utilization better, and my crash cooling faster due to the increased surface area.

I also filtered my hops through too tight a strainer.

I popped the lid to the corny this morning. There is a nice looking krausen in there at 55°F 12 hours after pitching. I'm going to continue making lagers because I have a good system set up for lager ferments.

I just decocted the mash out on my schwarz. 11 gallons at 1.051, 89% efficiency.I think it was over 110F out yesterday. My IC only got it down to 85F so left it in the chest freezer at 45F overnight. It was only to 55F this morning. I pitched my slurry anyway. Sad thing was I had to top off 1.5 gallons to get my 11 (I only had 9.5 gallons at 1.060). I guess my boil off and watter measurements were off this time. I wish I had colder watter ready.

Lager making seems like a real trial and error thing. I'm not going to have room for another for like 2 months+ so it'll give me time to really tweak and get everything prepared so I have a better brew day.

I like to use the cake for a bigger brew. So this brew used a 3.5 qt. starter from a White Labs German Lager vial and then I'll rack it about 10 days from brewday into a keg and let it finish fermenting in there while it naturally carbonates the brew. When I rack it, I'll wash the yeast cake and save 2 mason jars for future brews and then pitch the rest into a Bock (brewed 14 days after first brewday). I try to plan two brews so that I can use the cake everytime (like when I use those mason jars of washed yeast...I'll plan two successive batches for each one).

I plan to rack from corny to another corny and just store the yeast cake in the previous one. It can sit in the second lagering and after some time I'll just set and forget.

Quick question. What kind of trub can I expect out of the lagering corny? Is it too much I should rack again to yet another vessel to actually tap?

If you let it pretty much finish fermenting in the primary then you shouldn't have much trub/junk and could tap that secondary keg. When I rack it @ ~10 days it has JUST finished all the churning action and has just barely settled a little so it's still quite turbid and there's a decent amount of junk in the bottom when it's done. I just do a closed keg-to-keg transfer so there's no contact to air or anything. I usually go ~10 days in primary, ~1 month in secondary, then transfer to the serving keg where the cold lagering actually begins...at least a month and often longer, esp for big lagers.

I'm starting my O'fest now. I'm going to have to take some yeast away from my actively fermenting schwarzbiers (I hope that works out.) This way it's only a few days behind and I can fill my lagerator up. It's so hot I can't even brew ales without my chest freezer.

After 3 days I'm actually at 1.024. Expected FG is 1.013 I believe. I pitched just a couple degrees too warm (like 2 or 4), so by the time active ferment kicked it should have been in the proper range anyways.

I'm utterly impressed so far. The wort smells delicious.

I'll ferment what's left after I whirlpool and siphon off the good stuff (the hops, turb and the liter or two of wort) with a ale yeast (T-58) and I will know my FG long before my lager is done. The fast ferment test for my schwars is about done now. Not only that but I'll bottle the rest of it and drink it before the lager is done.

I just hydro'd my FFT for the Oktoberfest and it finished @ 1.013 using S-23. I kinda wanted ~1.014 but it'll be fine.

You guys are making me feel better.
I thought I was behind the curve when I brewed mine 2-3 weeks ago.
Had a b$%&h of a time finding the Oktoberfest yeast strain on top of it.

If 'behind the curve' you mean 'be ready in time' then we're all behind the curve. Oktoberfest starts in September and mine def won't ready until early October or so. I brewed a Marzen in March but I just floated that keg.

I hit 1.020 after 4/5 days at 48-52°. I just pulled it out for d-rest. This one will be weird because after 2 days at d-rest I'm going to return it to the keg back around 50°, but once I need the room to ferment v2 it'll be back at cellar temps until my APA keg is killed. Then I hope to begin lagering both O-fest batches.

Hopefully a couple weeks at 68° won't harm it too much before lagering. I'm not going to stress it.

However this schedule should help ensure a perfect fermentation and lagering procedure for the following batch.

I siphoned about a quart of sediment and wort for one of my Schwars and pitched that in to the Oktoberfest at six this morning, by noon it look like high kraeusen. I guess I only need a pint.

Now it's three week of no brewing. When I bottle these all have to do some ales again. These will finish lagering in bottles in a regular fridge.

One-way seems to be pretty giddy. I may halt this d-rest sooner than later.

I don't think the higher temps will hurt any. Mine will be at 75-80 for a week or so bottle conditioning.

Mine came to 4.8 gallons at 1.061 (85%.) I'll dilute it to a little more than five gallons in the bottling bucket for a simulated starting gravity of 1.057. I'm fermenting it in a five gallon carboy.

You are using a five gallon keg right? Are you using ferm-cap or something?