Steam Beer Dopplebock, or something like that?

[jujeinator]

Hey gang,

More of a thought experiment than anything else, really. I'm without my brewing kit for a few months (couldn't fit it in my car when moving upstate, so it's gathering dust at my folks' place for now), so I've been spending a lot of time dreaming up new recipes. I've always been interested in the idea of brewing a dopplebock or dunkel (it's too late for Oktoberfest this year), but don't have the space for a lagerator or the time to work out an effective swamp cooler to keep things down around 34 all day.

But then I got to thinking, perhaps influenced a bit by the Old Foghorn I'm having right now: what would happen if I brewed up something like a bock in terms of hopping/grain bill, pitched a lager yeast, but then fermented at Steam Beer temperatures? Has anyone else tried doing this, or drinking something like this? I can't really think of any reason why it would be bad or go wrong, but then again I couldn't really find anything to read about what lagering at high temps does to change the steam beer wort into what we know as Anchor Steam. Mostly I'm just curious to hear what you guys think, though, in terms of tweaking the recipe and things to watch out for-- gotta pass the time until I get my kit somehow! Cheers

 

[thegerm]

I'm growing up a wlp029 starter at the moment in order to make a dunkel hybrid. I plan on using a swamp cooler to keep the temps in the low 60s.

I think you have to pick a yeast that will suit your temperature range if you don't have temperature control. I've done a lot of forum skimming to try to figure out the best way to produce a lager like ale without lager like temperature control, and the answers I seem to see most often refer to this wlp029 kolsh yeast if you can keep your temps in the low 60s or high 50s, or if the best you can do is high 60s then something like wlp001 or US05 tends to be the go to answer for a clean lager like yeast flavor profile.

I think if you use any of these strains above their recommended temperature range, they're going to throw off all kinds of flavors that would make them very un-lager-like. the cal common yeast, after all, is a specific strain of lager yeast that is clean up into the 60s, like a kolsh yeast. But a genuine german lager strain at higher temperatures isn't going to behave like a steam beer yeast, because it's not.