Got my Oktoberfest done this weekend

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maltMonkey

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Just some notes from my Saturday brew session....

It was my first lager--an Oktoberfest (one of my favorite styles).

I decided at the last minute that if I was going to have to wait 8 months to drink this I wanted to make the biggest batch size I could, so I bumped up the recipe to 6 gallons. I'm pretty glad I did now. I figured that it's going to ferment slow @ 54° so I don't really need much headspace in my fermenter. I also adjusted the recipe for a 90min boil. I've always done 5gal batches with a 60min boil so I was stepping outside of my comfort zone a bit. Went well though.

I mashed at 151° (2° lower than what I was shooting for) and wound up with 81% eff. That's the lowest temp I've mashed at, and the highest efficiency I've gotten.

I tried something new for my mashout--I drew off about 2 gallons into my boil kettle, brought it to a boil and mixed it back into the mash. Worked OK, but I still ended up adding a couple gallons of boiling water to get my mash out temp.

I hate wort chillers!!!! At my 15 minute hop addition I noticed that the nylon hose on my wort chiller had melted from the burner. I tried taping it quickly, no go. Jumped in the truck and sped to Lowes. Bought some new hose, got back to the house 5 minutes later than when I should have removed all the hops. It should be fine though--I had 2.5 oz of hops in there, but 1oz were high AA that had already been boiling 60min, and the other 1.5oz were low (2.5-3.5%) AA hops.

Other than that everything went well....hopefully I should have some tasty beer in 7 months! :mug:
 
maltMonkey said:
Other than that everything went well....hopefully I should have some tasty beer in 7 months! :mug:
I hope it all turns out great. Guess we'll wait and see. Cheers!
 
maltMonkey said:
Just some notes from my Saturday brew session....

It was my first lager--an Oktoberfest (one of my favorite styles).

I decided at the last minute that if I was going to have to wait 8 months to drink this I wanted to make the biggest batch size I could, so I bumped up the recipe to 6 gallons. I'm pretty glad I did now. I figured that it's going to ferment slow @ 54° so I don't really need much headspace in my fermenter. I also adjusted the recipe for a 90min boil. I've always done 5gal batches with a 60min boil so I was stepping outside of my comfort zone a bit. Went well though.

I mashed at 151° (2° lower than what I was shooting for) and wound up with 81% eff. That's the lowest temp I've mashed at, and the highest efficiency I've gotten.

I tried something new for my mashout--I drew off about 2 gallons into my boil kettle, brought it to a boil and mixed it back into the mash. Worked OK, but I still ended up adding a couple gallons of boiling water to get my mash out temp.

I hate wort chillers!!!! At my 15 minute hop addition I noticed that the nylon hose on my wort chiller had melted from the burner. I tried taping it quickly, no go. Jumped in the truck and sped to Lowes. Bought some new hose, got back to the house 5 minutes later than when I should have removed all the hops. It should be fine though--I had 2.5 oz of hops in there, but 1oz were high AA that had already been boiling 60min, and the other 1.5oz were low (2.5-3.5%) AA hops.

Other than that everything went well....hopefully I should have some tasty beer in 7 months! :mug:

Cool, I'm planning on doing the same thing. My first lager will be an Oktoberfest as well. Unfortunately I cannot brew it for a couple weeks but it will still lager for about 6 months or so.
Your efficiency makes sense since that temp will result in a more fermentable wort due to a higher ratio of beta-amylase. Your beer may have a slightly more dry mouthfeel than intended, but still surely will be delicious!!!
 
GeoXP said:
Cool, I'm planning on doing the same thing. My first lager will be an Oktoberfest as well. Unfortunately I cannot brew it for a couple weeks but it will still lager for about 6 months or so.
Your efficiency makes sense since that temp will result in a more fermentable wort due to a higher ratio of beta-amylase. Your beer may have a slightly more dry mouthfeel than intended, but still surely will be delicious!!!

Yeah, I was pretty pleased with the efficiency. I don't think it will dry out to much because the WLP820 yeast is supposed to finish pretty malty. The downside (if you want to call it that) is that I was planning for a OG of 1.060 (thinking I might be overshooting a bit) and ended up hitting 1.065 :drunk:
 
That will be a wonderful beer. Your choice of yeast is great. I need to do the same thing. "A brewers work is never done".
 
I've been using WLP 833 and really like it. I just tapped a quick remake of last years at at only 10 weeks it tastes pretty good. It still needs some clearing though. I brewed this to check my reproducibility with the recipe. I'm not going to change anything. This Sunday is back-to-back 7.5 gallon batches. These will be for our party in October
 
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