Input requested: true German festbier

[brewuuhu]

I know fixes book is out of date but he does make some good points about stressing quality of ingredients and how speciality Malts typically are made from low quality barley.

Movarian malt isn't available (at least in the UK) and the best I can find is floor malted Bo pils by weyermann. Weyermans Vienna malt is either from basic pilsner malt or barke malt.

However weyermann do produce a dark bo pilsner malt. It's not widely available but it's flavour profile and colour 5-8L look spot in for the original Vienna malt produced in Dreher's time. By this I mean they match Vienna malt flavour profile but are made from high quality base malt.

In fact weyermann list it as a historic malt.

Has anybody ever used this malt? I am thinking of maybe a Vienna or marzen with this as a base malt supported by some munch or maybe some carahell.

It's difficult to track down so if someone has used it and can feedback that would be great.

I always try to use the best malts available to me, but I wasn't aware of the differences in Vienna malts etc.
I have used the dark Bohemian malt from Weyermann, but I think it's a shade darker than other Vienna malts. I used it in a dark Czech lager with a bunch of other malts (Carafa most prominently) and it ended up with quite a bit more roasted flavor than I would've liked. So can't really say much about the Bohemian Floor-malted Dark Malt from that one experience.

 

[TheMadKing]

Currently mashing the recipe I posted earlier, going to do a single decoction mash out here shortly

 

[techbrau]

I had Hofbrau Oktoberfest relatively fresh once at an Oktoberfest celebration here in the state's and it blew my mind.

I found this thread a month or two ago after tasting HB's Oktoberfestbier for the first time. Almost necro'd it just to say "Woo-hoo". I wouldn't say the beer was "life changing", but I think it's my favorite beer now.

If the goal is to make something similar to the modern beers that are served nowadays in the tents in Munich, you guys are barking up the wrong tree with the decoctions and all that. Decoction mashing may have been commonplace 100 years ago, but the beers back then tasted nothing like the beers made today.

Modern, commercial breweries in Germany of course emphasize all of the things that we normally consider to be "good brewing practice", like healthy fermentation and minimizing oxygen exposure post-fermentation as far as possible. But they also emphasize several additional quality control standards that don't get talked about as much by homebrewers:

1) Very, very low oxygen exposure throughout the hot side of the process. This includes removing the dissolved oxygen that is already in the brewing water, because it's already oxygen saturated coming from your pipes - something that most homebrewers who have tested HSA unfortunately overlooked. Completely separate from the development of the "cardboard" flavor that people usually cite, low amounts of HSA (as in the amount of HSA caused by the initial dissolved oxygen load of the brewing water as it arrives from your faucet) result in a "dulling" of the malt flavors that are a central part of the German lager flavor.

2) Minimal exposure of the wort to excessive heat. This is measured via something called the thiobarbituric acid index (TBI). The wort is like a prime steak, in the sense that you want to cook it to a perfect medium rare. Undercooked isn't good (DMS, failure to achieve good protein break, etc.), and overcooked isn't good (formation of reductones and cooking-out the "fresh grain" malt flavors). If you're evaporating more than about 8-10% of your wort volume during the boil, or noticing a large color difference between pre-boil and post-boil wort, then you have a problem.

3) Very pure brewing water, free from contaminants like metals leeched from piping (iron and copper) or poorly passivated equipment. You need to get rid of these sources of metals, because once they're in the wort/beer, they catalyze the formation of free radicals (read up on Fenton's reagent) that rapidly destroy the "fresh" grain and hop flavors characteristic of German lagers, including festbier.

There are other unique things that they do, like using soured wort to adjust mash pH (instead of technical acids), but the above 3 points are the most important factors that most people are unaware of.

Look into the LoDO/low oxygen brewing stuff if you are serious about making a "true German festbier".

There are plenty of American craft breweries who are following the historic/traditional methods. If you do the same, your beer will probably end up tasting like theirs. Ask yourself: have you ever had an American craft brewed lager that tasted like the Hofbrau Oktoberfest?

If you want to brew something that tastes like the modern German lagers, then you need to try to replicate the process that they are actually using nowadays, instead of what they did 100 years ago.

 

[TheMadKing]

If the goal is to make something similar to the modern beers that are served nowadays in the tents in Munich, you guys are barking up the wrong tree with the decoctions and all that. Decoction mashing may have been commonplace 100 years ago, but the beers back then tasted nothing like the beers made today.

Modern, commercial breweries in Germany of course emphasize all of the things that we normally consider to be "good brewing practice", like healthy fermentation and minimizing oxygen exposure post-fermentation as far as possible. But they also emphasize several additional quality control standards that don't get talked about as much by homebrewers:

1) Very, very low oxygen exposure throughout the hot side of the process. This includes removing the dissolved oxygen that is already in the brewing water, because it's already oxygen saturated coming from your pipes - something that most homebrewers who have tested HSA unfortunately overlooked. Completely separate from the development of the "cardboard" flavor that people usually cite, low amounts of HSA (as in the amount of HSA caused by the initial dissolved oxygen load of the brewing water as it arrives from your faucet) result in a "dulling" of the malt flavors that are a central part of the German lager flavor.

2) Minimal exposure of the wort to excessive heat. This is measured via something called the thiobarbituric acid index (TBI). The wort is like a prime steak, in the sense that you want to cook it to a perfect medium rare. Undercooked isn't good (DMS, failure to achieve good protein break, etc.), and overcooked isn't good (formation of reductones and cooking-out the "fresh grain" malt flavors). If you're evaporating more than about 8-10% of your wort volume during the boil, or noticing a large color difference between pre-boil and post-boil wort, then you have a problem.

3) Very pure brewing water, free from contaminants like metals leeched from piping (iron and copper) or poorly passivated equipment. You need to get rid of these sources of metals, because once they're in the wort/beer, they catalyze the formation of free radicals (read up on Fenton's reagent) that rapidly destroy the "fresh" grain and hop flavors characteristic of German lagers, including festbier.

There are other unique things that they do, like using soured wort to adjust mash pH (instead of technical acids), but the above 3 points are the most important factors that most people are unaware of.

Look into the LoDO/low oxygen brewing stuff if you are serious about making a "true German festbier".

There are plenty of American craft breweries who are following the historic/traditional methods. If you do the same, your beer will probably end up tasting like theirs. Ask yourself: have you ever had an American craft brewed lager that tasted like the Hofbrau Oktoberfest?

If you want to brew something that tastes like the modern German lagers, then you need to try to replicate the process that they are actually using nowadays, instead of what they did 100 years ago.

Your tone is condescending, just fyi.

Can you cite a single source for any of this please?

And yes I have had an American craft beer that tasted like the Hofbrau festbier. Pfram family pilsner and helles. They use decoction mashing, I asked.

A number of German breweries still use decoction mashing as well.

Let me ask you something. If I made a tasty beer that you liked, and I lied and told you it was LODO, would you be able to tell I was lying? Or would the power of suggestion make you believe the beer was better?

My money is on the latter. I've had "lodo" homebrew. It didn't do anything magical for me. I'm 90% sure its just placebo effect.

 

[techbrau]

Your tone is condescending, just fyi.

Pot, meet kettle.

Can you cite a single source for any of this please?

You can go get the degree at Weihenstephan or VLB and learn all of this. Or you can read the textbooks they use on your own. This one has an English translation:
https://www.vlb-berlin.org/en/technology-brewing-and-malting

And yes I have had an American craft beer that tasted like the Hofbrau festbier. Pfram family pilsner and helles. They use decoction mashing, I asked.

Then I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing.

Let me ask you something. If I made a tasty beer that you liked, and I lied and told you it was LODO, would you be able to tell I was lying? Or would the power of suggestion make you believe the beer was better?

If you made a beer I liked, I wouldn't care how you brewed it.

I don't intend to spark yet another LoDO debate in this thread, nor do I hope to convince you of anything. So let's avoid getting this thread shut down.

My goal is to present a different point of view for any 3rd party reading this thread, in the hopes that it might be helpful to them if they have gone down the decoction rabbit hole in search of authentic flavors, but ended up disappointed in their own results. I spent YEARS stuck in that rut, and LoDO got me out of it. I am only trying to help other people who are in a similar situation.

If you're happy with the results you currently get, then keep doing what you're doing

 

[TheMadKing]

Far less so than yours.


You can go get the degree at Weihenstephan or VLB and learn all of this. Or you can read the textbooks they use on your own. This one has an English translation:
https://www.vlb-berlin.org/en/technology-brewing-and-malting


Then I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing.


If you made a beer I liked, I wouldn't care how you brewed it.

I don't intend to spark yet another LoDO debate in this thread, nor do I hope to convince you of anything. My only intention was to present a different point of view for any 3rd party reading this thread, in the hopes that it might be helpful to anybody who has gone down the decoction rabbit hole in search of authentic flavors, but been disappointed in their own results.

If you're happy with the results you currently get, then keep doing what you're doing

My tone is a direct response to yours.

I have read that book cover to cover and have a copy of it. Kanz never advocates eliminating O2 from the water pre-mash. He actually states that oxygen is necessary in the mash and the boil to form some of the hop compounds necessary for flavor and stability. I suggest you reread the hop section.

I agree that reducing oxygen exposure post-boil to a higher degree than most homebrew setups allow is probably beneficial for hop compound stability.

I haven't yet adopted closed transfers or pressurized fermentation, but I have higher upgrade priorities and am still happy with my beer.

If you aren't trying to convince anyone of anything, then I would respectfully recommend not leading off your post by stating that we are all wrong and using archaic methods that are no longer relevant.

 

[user 246304]

OK, not to jump into this, just to say, I had Kunze and it kills me I sold it. Amazon's lowest is $400 and Siebel is at $299, so great to know VLB has it at $175 USD.

OK, out, gents. Thanks for the info.

 

[techbrau]

I have read that book cover to cover and have a copy of it. Kanz never advocates eliminating O2 from the water pre-mash. He actually states that oxygen is necessary in the mash and the boil to form some of the hop compounds necessary for flavor and stability. I suggest you reread the hop section.

One of the many, many times that he reiterates it. Read the last bullet point of Section 3.2.1.10:

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.

 

[TheMadKing]

One of the many, many times that he reiterates it. Read the last bullet point of Section 3.2.1.10:

Was just re-reading it myself, and you're right I forgot about that. But the reason you're trying to remove oxygen in the first place is because of the way industrial sized breweries have to handle their grain post milling. 3.2.1.6 explains it well:

In summary, the oxygen reduction is only necessary to prevent the oxidation of long chain fatty acids by lipoxygenases which are formed when mashing in below 60C (necessary to achieve maximum yield per pound of malt which we don't really care about).

The milled grains are also undergoing LOX activity from the moment of milling. In an industrial brewery, the time between milling and complete mashing in may be an hour or more as it passes through sifters and conveyers, which would lead to big problems without CO2 or N2 purges.

At the homebrew scale, our milling time is minutes, our mashing-in time is seconds, our mash-in temperature is usually closer to 70C (mine is anyway). So there's less need to reduce oxygen in the mash water since the LOX is destroyed at these higher temperatures.

So it may be beneficial to mill your grain immediately before mashing in (which I also do anyway), or possibly store your milled grain in a CO2 purged container.

 

[techbrau]

But the reason you're trying to remove oxygen in the first place is because of the way industrial sized breweries have to handle their grain post milling. 3.2.1.6 explains it well:

In summary, the oxygen reduction is only necessary to prevent the oxidation of long chain fatty acids by lipoxygenases which are formed when mashing in below 60C (necessary to achieve maximum yield per pound of malt which we don't really care about).

The milled grains are also undergoing LOX activity from the moment of milling. In an industrial brewery, the time between milling and complete mashing in may be an hour or more as it passes through sifters and conveyers, which would lead to big problems without CO2 or N2 purges.

At the homebrew scale, our milling time is minutes, our mashing-in time is seconds, our mash-in temperature is usually closer to 70C (mine is anyway). So there's less need to reduce oxygen in the mash water since the LOX is destroyed at these higher temperatures.

You might want to re-read the entire mashing chapter, paying close attention to the many times that he discusses the deleterious effects of oxygen on wort, especially on phenolic compounds from the malt. LOX is of minor concern next to peroxidase, polyphenol oxidase, superoxide dismutase, and metal-catalyzed formation of superoxide radicals.

 

[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.