What should I do with this Doppelbock kit?

[jllama]

Hey everybody,

My in-laws recently sent me a Doppelbock kit for x-mas… and while I am certainly thankful for the generous gift, this really isn’t a style of beer I’d ever considered brewing before. For one thing, I’m not really set up for lagering… I’m currently using a cool brew bag with frozen water jugs and I can pretty consistently keep fermentation temps in the 65 to 70 degree range, but I don’t think I can get it much lower than that. I have a kegerator that I keep around 42 degrees… I could possibly dedicate a keg for fermentation and use that. I live in Texas, so no nice cool basements around here… and even now in winter we get crazy temperature swings between 75 degrees and 20 degrees.

So, I think I have a few options…

1. I could try to exchange the kit for an ale kit… but I don’t think this is feasible. It came from a very small local shop in Maine and I don’t want them to be out any costs. Plus just paying to ship it back would be pretty expensive.

2. I could brew the kit and pitch an ale yeast… then ferment at 65-70 and maybe do an extended aging in the keg before I start drinking it. Would I use a Kolsh yeast? German ale yeast? I read somewhere that a guy used a Scottish ale yeast with a doppelbock kit and called it a wee heavy…

3. I could brew the kit, pitch a lager yeast and ferment it in a keg at 42 degress for a long time in my kegerator. This would tie up a keg and use up valuable beer storage space so I’d only want to do it if I had a reasonable chance of ending up with a decent beer…

4. Maybe I could hack the kit and make two smaller beers? It’s a partial mash kit with a can of Pilsen liquid extract, a can of Munich liquid extract, some unspecified steeping grains, and some German hops.

What do you guys think? Any other options I should consider?

Thanks,
Cody

 

[Kent88]

Try to brew early in a long weekend so you can pay close attention to it until krausen is done, keeping the temps low. Pitch wyeast 1007 on it, I've heard that 1007 can produce lager-like ales while you keep temps in the high 50F range. After krausen is finished you might be able to get away with letting the temps into the mid 60F range.

42F is too cold for most lager yeasts, I believe. Most I've read about aren't really comfortable below 47F.

Can you set up a "swamp cooler"?

You could just send me the kit, too. But if you aren't willing to send it back to Maine, you probably don't want to send it to Wisconsin, either.

I'd guess that if you have enough fermenter space you'll just divide everything up into other recipes. I wouldn't be surprised if the steeping grains were mostly melanoidin malt.

 

[dstockwell]

You could brew it and use Saflager 34/70 for the higher temps still using your cool brew bag, then lager in the keg.