Is that recipe posted on HBT? I may try it.
My homebrew in a bar story is not as good. But there is a local place where I have brought in some of mine, and received approval from the owner and bartender. Enough so that when they see me, they ask if I have any homebrew with me.
No, it isn't...not yet. I wasn't willing to post it until I was able to reproduce it, which now finally I feel confident can be done. But...I've done it twice and Morrey once, so I guess we can call it good.
FWIW: I have had a number of dark lagers and each and every one has disappointed me. So I browsed a bunch of different recipes, adjusted based on what elements of a recipe I know I like, added a little chocolate malt and chocolate wheat, and there we are.
I'm attaching a pic of my notebook which may fill in some details regarding the fermentation schedule. I do an accelerated fermentation schedule for this beer, holding it at 50 degrees until attenuation is half complete, then bump it up 4 degrees at a time to 66 to finish. You can see the schedule in the notebook photo.
Here's the recipe:
5# Maris Otter
5# Munich
6 oz 20* Crystal
3 oz Cara 8
6 oz Chocolate Malt
4 oz Chocolate Wheat
Hops: German Hallertau, 3.8 Alpha, 5.7 Beta.
1.5 oz at 60 minutes
.75 oz at 20 minutes
.75 oz at Flameout
No Whirlfloc
Yeast: White Labs 940 (Mexican Lager Yeast), 1 Liter Starter (yes, that's right).
I did BiAB for this beer so the water figures are based on starting with 7.25 gallons of water. One gallon is my tap water which has a lot of minerals in it, the other 6.25 is RO water.
Mash temp was 149 (I wanted a clean dry finish)
Mash pH was 5.25
Preboil gravity was 1.049, postboil (OG) was 1.057. Attenuated to 1.014, for an ABV of 5.64%.
Wort was oxygenated for 60 seconds w/ pure oxygen.
It was kegged at 12 days, and already was good at that point. Another week at lagering temps and it smoothed right out. The force carbing I did in the notebook suggests doing more; don't do that.
I did it with another beer, overcarbed it, and there you are.
Here's something I'm doing that is outside the norm. Most lager recipes will suggest a 2-liter starter. What I've been doing is a 1-liter starter, but I pitch at 70 degrees, put in the ferm chamber and have it drop to 50 degrees. I'm not crashing the starter in a fridge and decanting the beer from the flask; I'm just dumping it all in. That starter will have been going for, typically, 18 hours.
What's the net effect? As the wort slowly falls to 50 degrees, and with the nice boost of oxygen, I get what essentially would be a second liter of yeast. I'd wondered about this, but Chris White actually talks about this in his Yeast book as an option. Who knew?
I'm sure there's little difference between what I do and doing a 2-liter starter that's decanted and pitched at the fermentation temp. I'm pitching at 70 degrees with a starter that's also 70 degrees, so the yeast are going and vital and being dumped into a vessel at exactly the same temp. It takes off like a rocket.
