Noob brewhout lager kit question

[stansoid]

Hey everyone,

I picked up a brewhouse “premium lager” kit at Costco on sale for $20 the other day. I couldn’t resist the price. These kits, if you are not familiar, are 15 litre of pre-made pasteurized wort that the homebrewer adds 8 litres of water too to make 23L of total wort. There are many hacks online about cutting water, dry hopping, etc. Sadly, none of the hacks revolve around the premium lager kit.

I am relatively new to this, but I have done a few festa kits at this point and read a whole lot, so I have a decent understanding of what is and is not possible. This kit comes with coopers yeast and suggests I ferment it at around standard ale temperatures. I’m not the most skilled individual, but I know that to make this into a lager would require some serious temperature control and a yeast substitution. The kit, as provided, would make some kind of light ale as best I can tell.

My question is this - The wort in the kit that is destined to be light lager with an OG of 1.044 after adding 8 litres of water. If I add less water so the OG comes out to around 1.055 - 1.058 and ferment with Safale US-05 with a goal of hitting FG of approx 1.011 (approx. 80% attenuation), would that result in something similar to a blonde ale or American pale ale? Or is that impossible to tell from the outset?

Thanks for any input and cheers!

 

[bja]

It's impossible to tell without seeing the recipe that it was made from.

 

[JimRausch]

Whether it turns out more like a blonde ale or a pale ale depends more on the hopping level. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so go for it!
edit: As an aside, I think that these kits that are marketed as a 'lager' with a packet of ale yeast, are practicing deceptive advertising. Granted you can make a nice tasting ale with the kit, but it's not a lager.
Good luck!
edit#2: I don't know if you'll be able to get it to ferment all the way down to 1.011 for 2 reasons- 1. who knows the quality and age of the LME in the kit. 2. US-05 generally attenuates to around 75%, not 80%, IME. But at that price, what do you have to lose, right?

 

[stansoid]

Thanks for the advice Jim. I was basing the 80% attenuation on the information provided in the Fermentis literature. Perhaps I will adjust the OG upwards a bit to take that into account. My goal is to end around 5.5% to 6%ish ABV.

Perhaps I'll try to water it down to 1.060 with a target of 1.015 (75% attentuation). That should give me some decent range to fall between 5% and 6% ABV.

 

[pdietert]

It will also be a little light for a blond ale. It probably has around 25 - 40% adjunct content (corn and/or rice sugar).

Your attenuation is not going to adjust too much with the amount you water you add, with this kit you ARE going to get an attenuation of 80% or better due to the amount of adjunct sugars. If not I would be very careful of bottle bombs.

Do you have a brew pot >= 5 gallons and are willing to do a boil?

 

[stansoid]

I do not have a pot large enough for 5 gallons. That said...

I am fermenting it in two 3 gallon better bottle carboys. The reason for that is it allows me to fit a full batch + two 1 gallon carboys (if I get crazy) in a small 3.6 cu ft chest freezer for temperature control.. its a nice system for the small space I have allotted to this project.

I could consider doing a boil on half of the pre-made wort, and fermenting the other half per my previous plan. I have a pot large enough to boil half the wort for sure.

What would be your plan of attack and the advantage of such a thing?

Sidenote regarding the adjuncts: The kit claims to be made from all grains. See http://www.rjscraftwinemaking.com/Winemaking-101/Craft-Beermaking/About-Beermaking (product info page). It claims to have no added sugars.

Edit: The product page says the american lager has rice in it. This kit is called premium lager, but I suspect its the same thing.

 

[pdietert]

The rice and corn sugars in the extract were once grain's too . All malt is the description of a recipe with no adjuncts. This being a 'Premium American Lager' kit I imagine the extraction efficiency is pretty high.

If you want to enhance it you could steep some grains and add hops. Here is what I would do:

I am assuming you will split this so this is for half of your wort kit:

1 lb Maris Otter Pale Malt - crushed
1 oz Whole Cascade Hops
2 nylon mesh bags ( don't get the biab ones that will fit in a 5 gallon pot, they are expensive and too large, these should be around $1 -$2 each and fit about 1/4 th the hops in one an all the grain in the other )

add all grain to one of the nylon bags and 0.25 oz of the hops in the other. Tie the top of both (or use a nylon zip tie if available)

Dump 1/2 of the wort from the kit (~ 2 gallons) in your pot and heat to 162 degrees and add the grain bag. Stir and check the temperature after about 5 minutes, it should be around 156 - 158 degrees. If it is lower than 156 heat slowly to 156 to 158 stirring as you heat. if it is a couple of degrees over, do not worry about it. We want the temperature high so we can add some nonconvertible sugars. Hold the temp at around 158 for 20 to 30 more minutes then remove the bag and let it drain. Don't squeeze the water out, just let it drain. Add anywhere from 0.1 to 0.25 oz hops to the other sack, depending how much you want to add to the hops flavor and add the hops sack to the wort. This is the equivalent of first wort hopping. Bring the wort to a boil over 15 to 20 minutes and Boil for at least 30 minutes. Now you can either add another 0.1 to 0.25 for the last 5 minutes and/or some to the fermenter after fermentation has completed (or rack to secondary and add the hops there). Cool, transfer to fermenter and add 5 liters of water. Pitch the yeast when temperature is at fermentation temperature. I would shoot for 68 -72 degrees.

Here are an estimate of the numbers based on 0.25 oz hop addition to the boil (5 minute and/or dry hopping will not add too much bitterness):

OG 1.054
FG 1.012
Attenuation 77% (due to the high partial mash temp)
IBU: 25-30

This will not add significantly to the SRM of the origional wort. At most I would expect 1 - 1.5 points.

 

[pdietert]

Few more things: you could add 4 liters of water and check the gravity then adjust the remainder of water for your target OG.

Your FG should be 1.012 - 1.013. If it is over 1.013, make sure fermentation is complete before bottle conditioning.

Make sure to adjust your bottling sugar to account for temperature and volume of the amount you are bottling.

 

[stansoid]

Thanks for the feedback. Presumably the goal of this process is to darken the wort up a bit and impart some more flavour?

The recipe you listed is for altering half of the wort (as per my intent above).

Would it lead to the same outcome if I double the ingredients, boil 2 gallons of the wort per your directions, then split the newly boiled 2 gallons of wort in two and mix it in with the remaining untreated 2 gallons and then top up with water to the desired OG?

 

[pdietert]

The addition of the Maris Otter mashed at a high temp will give it a a bit of sweetness and add a little more malt flavor. It does have a little higher SRM but the color will not be too different than the origonal.

The IBU's would be a little lower (but that is a pretty rough estimate anyway) and the efficiency from the Maris Otter would also be bit lower. If you are going to do that, you might possibly go up to 2.25 lbs. of malt.

 

[pdietert]

BTW, you CAN mimic a lager with some ale yeasts, which this product attempts to do. I have a doppelbock that recently placed 1st at the Foam Cup homebrew competition that was fermented with Wyeast 1007 - German Ale.

 

[stansoid]

Would this same process work if I did the boiling in water, then added it directly into the wort? My thought process here is to cool the sealed premade wort ahead of time in my freezer and use some basic math to get it at the right temperature to make 4L of boiled wort match the 15L of premade wort come out to 70 F for pitching. I could mix it all up in my bottling bucket and rack it off to the two carboys right away. Does it need to get boiled in the brewhouse wort? Or could I do a small weak boil in 4 or 5L of water to get the same effect?

 

[pdietert]

Sorry for the delayed response. It would not work too well like that. The wort will stabilize the pH so you do not extract excessive tannin's from both the hops and grain.

 

[stansoid]

No worries on the delayed reply.

I have ordered the required ingredients and I am going to give it a try on the 29th of the month. I'll report back after Christmas to let you know how it turned out

Thanks again.

 

[pdietert]

Yes, please do let us know how it turned out.

 

[stansoid]

It took me a while, but I finished up. I finally started this beer on December 9, 2014, and cracked my first bottle today.

Between when I started this thread and made this beer I produced my first 2 AG beers in 1 gallon batches. I decided to run with that in my approach to modifying this beer kit. I followed pdietert's general concept of how to augment it (see above) + some crystal to darken it up a touch, but made the augmentation as a standalone AG batch, then mixed it into the kit.

I made a 1 gallon batch of beer and combined it with the Brewhouse light lager kit. For the 1 Gal batch I did a 60 min boil using 2 Lb Maris Otter and 1/2 Lb Crystal 120. I hopped it with 1/2 Oz Cascade for 60 min and another 1/2 Oz for 30 minutes per suggestion above (It was one bitter gallon of beer). Once it was done and cooled, I combined it with the kit in my bottling bucket, topped it up with a small amount of water and split it into the 3 separate fermenters. The OG of the combined wort was 1.067 and the total volume was about 5.5 gallons. I pitched it with 1 packet of S-05 and set the temperature at 64 F.

Fermentation stalled out after about 2 weeks at 1.030ish range (The gravity reading was a bit different in each fermenter). I let it sit for a week more, and then I got it started again by re-pitching another pack of S-05, agitating the yeast cake and raising the temperature to 68 F. Lesson learned is if the OG is above 1.060, 1 packet of dry yeast won’t do the job.

Once complete, the beer was then cold crashed for 5 days at just above freezing to clear it up.

The beer finished out at a final gravity of 1.012, or at about 7.2% ABV. It is a malty amber ale. I can taste a hint of the cascade (the cascade hop shines above whatever the kit was hopped with), but the sweetness is balancing it out surprisingly well (again, this was the prediction of pdietert in his suggestion.. you nailed it man). I’m pretty happy and have named it the Franken Ale (made from 2 worts in 3 fermenters and reassembled in the bottling bucket to destroy lives with it's powerful strength !...)

Thanks everyone for the input (especially pdietert). It was a good learning experience and I'm happy with the product.

See picture below.

EDIT: Also.. likely the last kit I will ever make...