Pre prohibition lager

[skw]

I'd love some input on developing a pre-prohibition style beer, somewhere around a CAP or what a turn of the century steam beer may have been. I'm not striving for historical accuracy, but hoping for a tasty, unusual but approachable beer.

After some reading, I've come to a malt bill of 75% six row as 25% corn. I have brewed cream ales with a 7/1 ratio of two row/corn and those were very tasty. Is there any need/use for crystal malts? What gravity should I aim for?

For hops, I was thinking of magnum for bitterin and chinook for aroma/flavor. I know chinook was bred long after the prohibition, would it be too far out of style or would it fit in with the rest? Would about 40IBU be appropriate?

For yeast: I have the CA lager strain and WLP 860 (Munich helles) available to me. I tend towards CA Lager, or is that too overpowering for the thin malt bill? I'm ipen for suggestions, or pointers to good recipes.

 

[BigEd]

Six-row North American malt is not always easy to find on the homebrew market nowadays so it would be fine to use something else. American 2-row brewers pale, British lager malt, or German pale malt would all work well IMO. The 75%/25% malt-corn ratio sounds about right.

A bit of light crystal 10-20L or CaraHell is fine, that's up to you.

Chinook is too aggressive for this beer. If you lean to the CAP I'd go with a German and/or Czech variety, for pre-Prohibition that would also work or a mild UK hop like Goldings is appropriate. The old American hop Cluster would likely have been used in either style and is still available today. I like to use it for the base bittering.

IBUs in the 35-40 range I think are good for a CAP. For the later pre-Prohibition style I'd knock that number down to about 30.

 

[drainbamage]

My latest batch was a variation on a CAP. I couldn't find any 6-row, so I used 2-row with about 16% each Vienna and flaked corn. OG 1.056.

I bittered with Cluster, and used Hallertau as a late addition. I agree with BigEd that Chinook would be too harsh for a beer like this.

 

[skw]

I may need to order some hops then. Six row is not the problem, although it's of Belgian origin and not North American - we'll see.

 

[JKaranka]

As above, you'd be best of with German finishing hops. I bet they grew them in the US as well for lager. British early lagers use German hops as well. If you can't get hold of German hops (Hallertau, Spalt, Tettnanger would probably work here) you could try go get something like Mount Hood. Or Saaz. Saaz's always a goodie.

 

[mx5red]

http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue3.5/renner.html

Jeff Renner explored this a bit; I think he had even met/talked with some of the old brewmasters from Schlitz or some other BMC brewery. Apparently the beer just kept changing and changing as they realized they could sell more and more of the watered down stuff.

I've brewed this recipe several times, very refreshing.

 

[skw]

Thanks for that link. That recipe looks like a good starting point. The New Ulm yeast that he refers to, some research points to this being available as Wyeast 2035 new. Would be quite the choice for me, as my hometown is Neu-Ulm, Germany.