High Gravity Lager All Grain Suggestions?

[rdavidw]

Looking to cook up a 5 gallon batch with a OG in the 1.08 to 1.09 range to lager, perhaps with amber or darker color.

I like how my barley wine ales come out with a OG of 1.1 and mash temp at 152F and ferment them at 69F for a month and then rack and repitch with champaign yeast for another month before cold crashing and kegging. Tasty but very sweet and malty, as expected.

Any suggestions on how to get a more crisp lager beer that is also fairly large? I can make a 4L lager starter and have an oxigen wand. Perhaps mash at 149F, ferment at 58F for 12 hours, drop to 50F and then pitch a campaign yeast just before the D rest?

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[jekeane]

a proper starter of Zurich Lager yeast if you can find it will do the job. I would brew a batch of a lower gravity lager schwarzbier, vienna, hells, etc then use that cake for a baltic porter.

 

[bajaedition]

Samiclaus is a commercial super high gravity beer that is a once a year brew, they ferment first with lager yeast, and once that stalls out, they rack it off and use champagne yeast in the high 60s to finish, then they Lager it for 8 months

 

[Dcpcooks]

I make an imperial pils every year. 1.096 to 1.016-.018 range. I have made it with a step mash, a double decoction and a simple infusion at 152. I prefer the step mash for ease and it's very close to the decoction in malt profile. The single infusion wasn't worth the grain bill in my opinion as it lacked that big round malt you'd expect in this beer.

I use weyermann floor malted bohemian pilsner malt with 3% acidulated malt and 2% melanoiden malt with 100% RO water with 5g of CaCL per 1/2 barrel split between the mash and sparge based on strike volume percentages.

I shoot for 50 ibu's at first wort for a 90 min boil and add another 10-15 ibu's at 20 min. I add 1 oz per five gallons at flame out. I also dry hop it for a week after lagering before kegging it. I will up the ibu's to 60 for the first wort hop on the next batch. I used magnum to first wort and Saaz the rest of the way. Wyeast Czech pils yeast. I do a multi step 5L starter to get to 1,800B cells per half barrel. I usually start with 3-4 fresh packs and build it up from there. I have my lhbs order in the yeast so it's very fresh. I big healthy starter is critical for this beer to finish out. I've never used or needed to repitch another yeast to finish. I do add a 10ppm of O2 before I pitch and hit it again at 18 hours after pitching.

It's a big malty beer, similar to rouge's morimoto imperial pils. It takes a while to ferment. Usually about a month+ in primary at 50 with a d rest at 58 to help it finish. Then I rack it to secondary and lager it for at least 4 months at 38 in my keggerator in a Speidel 60l fermentor.

It's a great beer for the fall/winter season

 

[saltymirv]

34/70 can handle up to 9% alcohol or so and since its dry yeast, its easy to pitch a lot of yeast. If you want to go higher than 9% I'd go with Zurich Lager, as jekeane said

 

[Steveruch]

Any suggestions on how to get a more crisp lager beer that is also fairly large?
Thanks for any ideas.

Replace some of the grain with sugar. I'm doing an imperial pilsner sometime next week and plan a pound of sugar with 6 pounds of dme.

 

[bfish]

Similar to table sugar, instant rice can dry a beer. Leaving a crispness, if not overdone (say around 20%).