Mash adjustments for body in lagers

[HighVoltageMan!]

1) Low oxygen on the hot side. This is removing oxygen from your strike water and trying to keep the O2 levels low during the mash.

There is more evidence that low oxygen levels reduce oxidation of the lipids, these will cause staling after fermentation is completed. As far as I know, Sierra Nevada has done research into this and found lower oxygen levels in the entire hotside production increases shelf life. It's really hard to nail this down on a home brew side, but it does increase the "freshness" of beer, at least it does to me.

2) Clear mash wort. This is about leaving everything behind in the mash tun and transferring very clear wort into the boil kettle. Brewtan B helps a lot with this when added to the mash.

Again, this reduces lipids. The clearer the wort, the lower the lipids. Lipids can be helpful to yeast for cell wall production, but the yeast can also produce it's own but needs oxygen to synthesize the lipids. Dry yeast has it's own supply and doesn't need oxygen (first generation). Lipids are a staling agent and can be reduced by a constant vorlauf during the mash.

3) Spunding as in naturally carbonating your kegs.

This is big. This will produce free co2 and a higher quality co2. There is zero oxygen added to the beer with this method. There is also active fermentation taking place, so should any oxygen get introduced, the yeast will act as an oxygen scavenger. IMHO, spunding in the fermenter is best, if you can.

I have a different practice to spund my lagers and most other beers. Nearly all my lagers are pressure fermented at lager temperatures, so I just raise the pressure and temperature near the end of fermentation. I wait until the fermentation is nearly complete and use the spunding valve to bring the pressure up to 20-25 psi @ 58-60F. If I guess wrong and there is too many fermentables left, the valve just vents the excess co2. When it's done (lagers are almost always done in 14 days) I crash cool it and clear it in the fermenter. I then do a close transfer to a purged keg. It works awesome.

Happy (lager) brewing!

 

[Broothru]

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.

Shameless thread drift:

Where are you sourcing the Heidelberg? This year is my “Year of the Kolsch”, and my GoTo is either the Best Malz or alternatively Weyermann Cologne, both Spring malted 2-row barley from Northern DE.

I had about 10# of Cologne/Heidelberg leftovers which wasn’t going to be enough for my 5 pilot batches and one or two full batches for consumption and competition. Couldn’t find either one anywhere, except for one mail order vendor who only sold in 1# bags. I ordered 25.

Yesterday my LHBS guy called to let me know he was placing an order with BSG, and wanted to know if I wanted him to add on a 55# bag. Wish he’d called a few weeks earlier.

Williams Brewing has the Weyermann Cologne, but you either get it by the ounce or the 55# sack. Coast to coast freight would cost more than the 55# grain sack, and $.24/ounce + shipping would run around $4 bucks per pound!

Now these Kolsch style malts can be used in place of just about any Continental Pilsner, and vice versa, but there are a lot more Pilsner malts out there (foreign and domestic) that I want to use in my lagers, so I don’t want to load up on only one grain. But I’d sure like to obtain another 20-25 pounds as a buffer in case I run low and be forced to split Kolsch malt with regular German Pilsner.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Shameless thread drift:

Where are you sourcing the Heidelberg? This year is my “Year of the Kolsch”, and my GoTo is either the Best Malz or alternatively Weyermann Cologne, both Spring malted 2-row barley from Northern DE.

I had about 10# of Cologne/Heidelberg leftovers which wasn’t going to be enough for my 5 pilot batches and one or two full batches for consumption and competition. Couldn’t find either one anywhere, except for one mail order vendor who only sold in 1# bags. I ordered 25.

Yesterday my LHBS guy called to let me know he was placing an order with BSG, and wanted to know if I wanted him to add on a 55# bag. Wish he’d called a few weeks earlier.

Williams Brewing has the Weyermann Cologne, but you either get it by the ounce or the 55# sack. Coast to coast freight would cost more than the 55# grain sack, and $.24/ounce + shipping would run around $4 bucks per pound!

Now these Kolsch style malts can be used in place of just about any Continental Pilsner, and vice versa, but there are a lot more Pilsner malts out there (foreign and domestic) that I want to use in my lagers, so I don’t want to load up on only one grain. But I’d sure like to obtain another 20-25 pounds as a buffer in case I run low and be forced to split Kolsch malt with regular German Pilsner.

Hey, Brewthru! I used to get it from Annapolis Homebrew, but as a MD brewer you likely know the deal. Looks like MoreBeer still has it, I have grabbed a pair of 5lb bags from them in the past. Their prices are a bit absurd these days and I've mostly stopped doing business with them as a result.

Thanks for the reminder about Cologne malt. I've always wanted to get my hands on 10lbs, but I can never seem to find a source.

I hope that helped somewhat.

 

[mabrungard]

The beers finish out very dry (1.006 - 1.008) but have a lot of body to them.

Are you sure it's 'body' that you're perceiving or is it 'fullness'? With that low FG, I'm leaning toward it being fullness. Chloride lends to fullness perception.

For light lagers, I typically keep the ionic content fairly low. To keep enough calcium in the mash to enable oxalate precipitation, I typically use Bru'n Water's "Add Sparging Water mineral additions to the Mash" button. That technique enables me to reduce the overall finished ionic content in the final beer and let the malt and hops do the real talking for the beer. I see that the OP reports chloride and sulfate targets in the 50's and 60's, but I'm typically in the 30's. The good thing with the OP's targets is that they are roughly equal and I agree with that for light lagers.

If the OP is interested in testing if more dryness is needed in the finish, I suggest adding gypsum to a glass of a finished beer. A 'thin' pinch (between thumb and forefinger) of gypsum powder added to a pint of the finished beer and mixed into solution will add roughly 100 ppm sulfate. That's a substantial increase, but it would show the effect. You might want to take that pinch amount and divide it in half to create a more moderate effect in a light lager.

I just brewed a German Leightbier last night and used a 144F/156F hochkurz mash and it's done a pretty good job of imparting enough body for this low gravity lager in the past.

 

[Broothru]

Hey, Brewthru! I used to get it from Annapolis Homebrew, but as a MD brewer you likely know the deal. Looks like MoreBeer still has it, I have grabbed a pair of 5lb bags from them in the past. Their prices are a bit absurd these days and I've mostly stopped doing business with them as a result.

Thanks for the reminder about Cologne malt. I've always wanted to get my hands on 10lbs, but I can never seem to find a source.

I hope that helped somewhat.

Yeah, I was pretty bummed about Annapolis HB closing the doors. These days we don't get down to either Baltimore or the D.C. Beltway as much as we did in the past, but whenever we were on the way to G&M's for crab cakes or BWI to pick up visitors, the trip would always include a stop at either Maryland Home Brew or Annapolis HB for 'necessary supplies.' Last trip down that way I couldn't even find Maryland Home Brew. They moved to a new location over a year ago and I didn't even know!

I can't remember where I finally located BestMalz Heidelberg online (maybe Hop Crafters or Label Peelers) but I couldn't order anything larger than 1 pound bags unless I got a 55# sack. No 5 pounder or 10 pounder quantities. So I ordered 25 1# packages. At least those shipped under flat rate pricing. Then my Williams Brewing "find" limited my choices for Weyermann Cologne to either "by the ounce" of a 55# sack. I understand inflation and rising costs, but more than $4 per pound for something I paid less than $2 per pound before Covid is not sustainable for a hobby, especially for one that has the outward appearance of dying out.

I agree that I've also seen the unusual rise in grain pricing at MoreBeer since their centralized warehouse relocation, but most of their other pricing seems in line with what you'd expect in today's uncertain economy. Grain price commodities hikes may be due to agricultural price increases (BigAg) in general. All I know is when I got into this hobby in the early 80s I could brew a 5 gallon batch for $15-$20 all-in for supplies, and today it's a minimum of $40. I guess doubling the price every 40 years is about right, though the sticker shock seems to feel more sudden recently. The 'hop creep' price rise hasn't seemed that sudden or abrupt for some unexplained reason.

Guess I'll just have to pass the price increases on to the consumer. Hey WAIT. I'm the consumer!

 

[hottpeper13]

Guess I'm lucky enough to live close to Proximity Malts in Milw. I just scored 55 lbs pale ale malt and 55 lbs of pilsen malt for 70$ ea. and 55lbs of Munich for 80$. To make it even better if you belong to a brew club we get a 20% discount, so ~1.00$ lb.

 

[ntempleton]

Thanks VT. I am fermenting around 50-52, but i do perform a diacetyl rest around 60-64 for a few days before lagering. I'm wondering if this may be part of the culprit.

For the fresh hop, they are used at the whirlpool only. All of my IBU's are with pellet hops until i'm able to harvest enough to make a 100% fresh hop pilsner. As i understand it, i need to use 6-8 times the amount of wet hops compared to pellets.

I was also thinking of a 1.25-1.5:1 ratio as well.

Thanks for the informaiton!

I think your water is the first thing to change. The profiles you posted are soft. Soft water makes fat beer (mostly, kinda, you-know-what-i-mean). Most of the yellow lagerbier we make at the brewery targets 1.25:1. That works at the brewery because we pitch at 1.75 million cells/mL/°Plato. Personally I think 1.5:1 is even better, but that argument starts to get more technical than sensory driven.

 

[Broothru]

Hey, Brewthru! I used to get it from Annapolis Homebrew, but as a MD brewer you likely know the deal. Looks like MoreBeer still has it, I have grabbed a pair of 5lb bags from them in the past. Their prices are a bit absurd these days and I've mostly stopped doing business with them as a result.

Thanks for the reminder about Cologne malt. I've always wanted to get my hands on 10lbs, but I can never seem to find a source.

I hope that helped somewhat.

Hot off the presses:

Just got an email from MoreBeer, and it looks like they've finally got the BestMalz Heidelberg back in stock. When I loaded a sample order into my cart, it didn't give me the dreaded Unavailable note in red letters, nor redirect me to a list of 'alternative' grains (many of which were also unavailable). Order quick before I buy it all!

 

[Bramling Cross]

Hot off the presses:

Just got an email from MoreBeer, and it looks like they've finally got the BestMalz Heidelberg back in stock. When I loaded a sample order into my cart, it didn't give me the dreaded Unavailable note in red letters, nor redirect me to a list of 'alternative' grains (many of which were also unavailable). Order quick before I buy it all!

That's great news, thanks for passing it along. I hope you find it performs well and makes a great beer for you!

 

[Halfakneecap]

Hot off the presses:

Just got an email from MoreBeer, and it looks like they've finally got the BestMalz Heidelberg back in stock. When I loaded a sample order into my cart, it didn't give me the dreaded Unavailable note in red letters, nor redirect me to a list of 'alternative' grains (many of which were also unavailable). Order quick before I buy it all!

I love that malt for all light ales and lagers. Expensive here too but worth it
Last current lot waiting for a helles or similar.

 

[Broothru]

I agree. It's a high quality and versatile malt that can be used in many lager/pilsner style beers as well as recipes calling for light colored high diastatic malts. The quantities I ordered it worked out to $2.40 per pound, which I think is actually quite good given the broad price increases we're seeing in today's market prices.

 

[Basspaleale]

One of the simplest ways to dry your lagers is to add table sugar at the end of your boil. It will not change your flavor at all. You will need to adjust your base grain quantity to get your numbers dialed in, but it really works. I use 12 oz. of sugar in a 10 gal batch.