Input requested: true German festbier

[TheMadKing]

For anybody who might think that this is only a "big brewery" problem that doesn't matter at "home-brew scale", the reality is that oxygen ingress at home-brew scale is many times higher than at commercial scale due to the larger surface area to volume ratio of a home-brew system:

The arrow marked "20 l" points to a 20 liter, home-brew sized system. You can see that from 100 hl (~85 bbl) and larger, the surface area to volume ratio is less than 1/10 as much as a home-brew system, getting close to 1/20 for 500 hl systems. This means home-brew systems experience more than 10-20x as much oxygen exposure as a commercial system under normal conditions.

that's only an accurate statement if 100% of the oxygen uptake during brewing occurred via absorption through the surface of your brew kettle, which you just argued was not the case. You get oxygen during milling, during mashing in, during pumping, during stirring, during siphing... And there is far less of all of these things in homebrewing.

You also have to take into account the reduced time everything takes on the homebrew scale. Gas diffusion is a relatively slow process, so by simply reducing your mash-in time from hours to seconds, you're reducing the oxygen exposure exponentially.

I'm speculating obviously, but I would like to see a plot of TDO during a homebrew brew day, vs a small brewpub brew day. I would be willing to bet that overall, an average homebrewer has less TDO integrated over the brew day as compared to a craft brewery.

At the end of the day it's just not practical to remove oxygen from your mash without lengthening your brew day substantially (mine is 3.5-4 hours on average from filling the kettle to finish cleanup). And for me that amount of work just isn't worth the very minor (IMO) benefits.

I make pretty good beer without all the extra fuss, and my german lagers come out great. I'm not chasing some white whale here, I just haven't ever made this style before, and that was the point of this thread: to distinguish between Marzen, American Oktoberfest, and Tent Beer. I make a damn good pilsner and doppelbock that have a very full malt characteristic with no "flatness" or stability issues. What I'm doing is working for me.

I'm sorry if I got a little heated.

 

[doug293cz]

Ok folks, time to stop the off topic LoDO debate in this thread. This is a recipe thread, not a brewing technique thread. The debate is also starting to descend into personal sniping, which is never allowed.

Any future posts in this thread even hinting at a LoDO debate will be deleted.

doug293cz
HBT Moderator

 

[Die_Beerery]

Here is my festbier this year, very HB like.
View attachment IMG_3855.jpg


60% pils, 30% Vienna, 10% carahell. 24ibu with a triple hop schedule. Puts you right in the tents.

 

[stpug]

One happened to be a Hofbräu Oktoberfest... my life has been changed.

Okay, that may be a little extreme, but still... how on Earth do they pack that much flavor into a beer that looks like Bud Light?

If you haven't had it, this is a brilliantly clear, light gold beer. Huge fluffy white head, superb lacing. Lightly sweet up front, slight graininess, balanced finish. Light, refreshing mouthfeel.

I'm assuming that I need to go very simple; this beer is viewed by some as just being a beefier Helles. I'm guessing very heavy on pilsner malt, a small amount of either light munich or Vienna, that's it. Possibly a short decoction.

If you have any relevant feedback, I would love to hear it. Google gives me jack and squat in terms of useful results for recreating this beer.

Since you're asking about relevant feedback to how you can pack that much flavor into such a light beer then it would remiss to not mention that one method that can greatly enhance the malt and hop quality of your beer would be utilizing some (or all) of the low oxygen brewing process. The gist of the process is minimizing (to an extreme) the amount of oxygen that comes in contact throughout the entire brewing process, and only allowing it when you specifically choose to and at the level that you specifically desire. The process can be done in any way that gives the brewer the ability to control that variable, and several methods have already been well proliferated throughout the homebrewing sphere. This, of course, is only one way to obtaining the kind of results you're seeking. There may be others.

Recipe cannot be overlooked either. Couple a sound recipe with a sound process, and you're on the right track to producing a "true German festbier". @Die_Beerery 's recipe above is a good jump-off point; add in some oxygen mitigation techniques and you're well on your way (BTW, the picture above in his post is a beer produced with low oxygen brewing techniques).

One of the excellent advantages of low oxygen brewing, when it's desirable, is a significant reduction in beer color such that you can use large percentages of higher kilned base malts and yet still have a very lightly colored beer. The flip-side of that coin is sometimes you want darker color to a beer and may need to enhance the color through the use of small percentages of roast malts and/or coloring agents like sinamar.

 

[Yooper]

Since the OP hasn't asked a question in over 3 years, I can safely say that this thread is not longer helpful to him.

If you want to continue a discussion on this topic, or a new topic, please open a new thread.