Octoberfest

[pmoneyismyfriend]

Making a 10 gallon batch of Octoberfest. My equipment does not provide room enough for the entire grain bill, so I modify using extract. I modified my grain quantities to enable me to use strictly extract for my base malts, leaving me to mash the Vienna and caramunich 6 and 2 lbs respectively. My brew kettle allows me to boil 10 gallons, so I pull the mash liquid to get what I can based on 1.5 qts per pound, strike and sparge, then adding the extracts and water to 10 gallons. The all grain version is derived from Brewing Classic Styles and the mash temp for the all grain version is 154. Being that I am only mashing Vienna and Caramunich, do you see a need to alter the mash temp. The other twist is I plan on pitching on a kolsch cake, and fermenting around 62 degrees, thus not truly being a lager. Any thoughts on this process?

 

[m1k3]

In your situation I'd just brew 5 gallons and work on a larger mash tun.

I use a 70qt cooler and can do any 10 gallon beer I would want.

Back to your plan, if you insist... Leave a few pounds of Pilsner malt in the mash. This will increase the diastatic power of the mash and you'll get quicker conversion.

 

[pmoneyismyfriend]

I ended up using 6 lbs of pilsner malt, and reduce the pilsner extract to 3.3 lbs. I needed to split the process between 2 days. I mashed, collected my wort covered it and let it sit til the following day. The next day, the wort smelled funny, kind of like corned beef or something. I figured maybe dms and it seemed to dissipate with the boil. When cooled, I pitched on a kolsch cake. Fermentation took off like normal. I reached my finish gravity and racked to secondary. When I opened the primary to rack, the smell was of fruit punch and the taste sample, was fizzy and tasted somewhat sour, not like spoiled sour, but kind of like oud bruin ish. Any idea what I got going on?

 

[TheBigLebrewsk1]

Leaving your wort to sit out soured it, I've accidentally have done this with a Munich helles. You're only options are to drink it and tell your friends that it's a new style of a German sour ale or get rid of it. The sourness won't go away.

 

[pmoneyismyfriend]

I thought that might be the case. Some of my extract brews, such as a Kolsch, call for munich, which needs to be mashed and not steeped and I have partial/stove top mashed my specialty grains many times and let them sit til the next day and have had no problems. I am going to assume that maybe it's the pilsner malt or the vienna maybe that was affected as I used all extract for munich.

 

[TheBigLebrewsk1]

I had a similar experience, I left a batch or two of pale ale wort out and had no problems but I may have just been lucky.

It could be an airborne pathogen as well.