What 'style' beer am I brewing?

[Dland]

I've been making beer all the beer I drink for over a year now, and now I'm on this forum, I'd be interested in some opinions of what style I've been brewing lately, as I have been brewing to my taste in beer, not a beer type or recipe. My experience in the flavor style department is limited.

There are not a lot of lager choices in Beer Smith style descriptions, and most of my brews do not match the parameters of any of them. I was thinking maybe a Bock, or Czech Export or premium, but not sure. lately have been adding a 5-7% corn to some batches, & pretty sure that would disqualify for most European styles.

Typical batch, approx 10 gallon:

10# pilsner, 6-10# 2 row pale or brewer's malt, (depending on desired ABV), 1# wheat, 1#Munich, (aromatic) and sometimes 1# flaked corn.

IBUs are usually in the mid 30s, with around 70% in first wort, 20% 30 min boil, 10% steep whirlpool.

Safelager W34/70 yeast. Fermentation temp 54-60(now cellar is warming up.) 2 weeks in fermentor with 2 or 3 trub dumps, diacityl rest, rack to kegs and crash at 34*F, force carbinate to 2.6-2.8 vols, lager at least 30 days.

ABVs running around 5.6-7.4, Staring gravity 1.054-1.063, Finish gravity around 1.008-1.010.

Anyway, I like the stuff, and am not particularly hung up on naming them, in fact I just number the batches and date. I brew on average every other week, and am usually making adjustments and trying different hops and grains.

Just wondering what you experts think these lagers would be called, will be switching to ale yeast for the summer, and ales seem easier for me to catagorize.

 

[JohnSand]

I put some of your numbers into BrewersFriend and got Classic American Pilsner or British Golden Ale.
You could give it a style of your own.

 

[kh54s10]

If you are using a recipe building program to design the beer, just go through the styles and see which one fits the best. Then that would be the closest to Dland Lager.

 

[Yacov327]

Sounds like a Helles Bock to me. Helles just mean pale. A clean yeast like 34/70, high attenuation, and a pils/munich base is traditional of the style. If you want to make sure you are staying within that stick to Saazer type hops.

Definitely not Czech. Czech lagers are stopped before they fully attenuate .

 

[beernutz]

Your IBUs and OG are a bit high but you made a Heineken imo.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]Definitely not Czech. Czech lagers are stopped before they fully attenuate .

Gonna need a citation on that one...

Cheers!

 

[ClaudiusB]

Sounds like a Helles Bock to me. Helles just mean pale. A clean yeast like 34/70, high attenuation, and a pils/munich base is traditional of the style. If you want to make sure you are staying within that stick to Saazer type hops.

Definitely not a Helles German Bock with wheat and sometimes flaked corn.

 

[Dland]

Your IBUs and OG are a bit high but you made a Heineken imo.

Thank goodness it does not taste like that.

 

[chickypad]

As someone mentioned above seems like it might be closest to a CAP with the corn (or pre-Prohibition lager as I guess it's called now). What was your hop variety/schedule?

 

[MrPowers]

I would also call it a Classic American Pilsner (Pre-Prohibition Lager). It doesn't really seem to fit in anywhere else as most German/Czech lager styles are pretty strictly defined. It could also fall into the category International Pale Lager category.

 

[Dland]

As someone mentioned above seems like it might be closest to a CAP with the corn (or pre-Prohibition lager as I guess it's called now). What was your hop variety/schedule?

Hop schedule does vary, last few have been 1 oz leaf saaz first wort (was going to use as finishing hop but the stuff is 13.1AA, so using it up as early hop). 2 oz pellet ahtanum 3.2AA 30 min boil, .75 leaf citra 13.4 AA.

Another recent combo was Mandarina Bavaria, crystal, Amarillo, respectively. I'm still messing around with hop profiles and trying different strains, trying to learn their characteristics first hand. I'll get a few varieties and try them until they are used up, & making notes on my preferences for future brews.

I tend to favor lower acid, more flavorful hops in my lagers, but what you going to do when your see the label on your new pound of "Czech Saaz" says 13.1 AA? Going to use it somewhere. The citra seemed high too.

 

[Dland]

Thanks to everyone who replied to this. Interesting to me is that I signed up for this forum to try to figure out what CAP stood for, and it was sort of what I have been brewing. And there it is "Pre Prohibition Lager", right in the Beer Smith. Very close to some of my recipe profiles, except I sometimes tend toward higher ABV. (I'm one of those who likes a taste of alcohol, sometimes)

Came by what I was doing when a friend who is a pro brewer was helping me set up my rig a while back, and I said I wanted to make a lager, and he looked though my grain supply and suggested 1# wheat for head retention, and we threw in some carapils I had bought. Since, I have substituted the cara with munich, vienna & aromatic(one at a time) and ran each of those up to 25% grain bill, then tried corn for fun, also have run that up to 20%. Have kind of settled in on 5-10% on the aromatic types and corn, above that tastes a little much to me. I do run straight pilsen and pilsen & 2 row brewer or pale sometimes too.

This weekend am going to make a batch with same recipe as last week, but use Safeale 05 instead of 34/70, and see how that compares. The last batch maxed out at 63.9F during fermentation, now down to 63.1 & still running, cellar temp now 61*F & very slowly rising.

 

[divrack]

beer.

 

[JohnSand]

I use 05 quite often and like it. Some people get peach flavors from it below 64, I have too.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I use 05 quite often and like it. Some people get peach flavors from it below 64, I have too.

I’ve had those same peach flavors with S-04 when fermenting below 60. It sounds like it would be a nice flavor but I didn’t prefer it. But S-04 would work great at his cellar temps.