Writing from the Mid-Atlantic and as a native of the Pacific Northwest that gets murdered by the humidity each year, my beers get really, really dry during July and August. The humidity whips my butt and my beers show it.
Here are some techniques that I've learned for my July and August lagers:
1) Extend your primary saccharification step. In my case, I mash in at 148F for 90min. I then follow this with a 30min step at 158F with the recirculation running. It takes a while, but the extra time is validated by the FG. It works.
2) Give some thought to your yeast strain. I used to like Diamond Lager for my July and August beers because it really sucked a beer dry. Then, about three-four years ago, it seemed to become a lot fatter. The numbers were as expected, it just felt fatter on the tongue. I'm back to using 34/70 for my spring and summer lagers and S-189 for my fall and winter lagers.
3) Rice is nice. Prior to Bismark's German Reunification efforts, some German brewers were thrilled by rice because it really does help to make a dry, pale, sprightly lager. Unfortunately, in addition to laying the groundwork for two world wars, Bismark also caved to the Bavarians and their silly purity law that was never about purity, so rice was verboten--and generations of beer drinkers suffered. Adjuncts are a tool, like any other, in your brewing toolbox. What matters is whether you're satisfied with what's in your glass. Are the guys that write polemics against adjuncts and look down their noses at beers that aren't triple decocted drinking your beer? Then #(%*% them. You don't need those clowns and you certainly don't need them in your glass. Drink what you enjoy, and if what you enjoy includes rice, drink it with pride!
Corn is also great, it's just less transparent than rice. I rarely brew a Summer lager without corn, it tastes like summer.
4) Use gypsum with measured abandon. Even in cold weather, I like my lagers dry and gypsum is an important part in getting them dry. I keep trying to make lagers with the softest, cleanest water and they always seem to come up fat, round, and fatiguing to drink. Gypsum sorts that out, but if you go too far with it, you start to get aspirin-y notes on your finish. For my 7-gal batches with DC water, I like to hit my mash with 4g of gypsum at strike, backed up by a further 1g pre-boil to reinforce what I lost in the tun. I don't use calcium chloride. I have a preference for non-iodized salt to amp the malt a bit.
5) Carbonation matters. I do not use a manifold for all my kegs, nor do I run a constant serving pressure for all my kegs. Instead, I prefer to move my CO2 line from keg to keg, providing bursts as needed to maintain an ideal (in my case, very low) serving pressure. That allows me to keep my UK ales barely carbonated, my US and German stuff lightly carbonated, and my July and August fizzy yellow swills highly carbonated. That extra Co2 bite really means something.
6) Try Bestmalz Heidelberg malt. As much as I adore my Barke, Heidelberg makes a fantastic fizzy yellow high summer beer.
7) Get serious about your pH. Mash in at 5.4, then over-acidify your sparge water to arrive at a pre-boil pH of 5.25-ish. Pull a sample at 20min and crash cool it in the freezer to ensure your wort is hitting the fermenter at pH 5.0-5.1. You'll likely need to add at least 1-2ml of 8x% lactic/phosphoric at 10min to hit this objective. It makes a world of difference and it's the main thing that I'm currently struggling with in my brewery.
That's what I currently "know," for what it's worth. What I know is always slowly changing. I hope you find this glimpse at what I currently know useful.
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