Saturday, February 25, 2012

Hopbursting a Lager

In the year since I started brewing, I have made 19 different ales. It was time to make my 20th beer a lager. It's a little tougher for me to make a lager because I don't have temperature control and that is quite important for that style of beer, but I decided to go forth and do my best.
At present, my lager is sitting in the laundry sink with 47F water. I have to regularly add ice to keep it at that temperature. My big concern is to get it to just above freezing for the long, 2 month lagering session. I haven't figured that one out yet. I might just maintain that in a secondary for a few weeks, then bottle. After it is done carbonating at room temperature, I will put the bottles in the fridge for a couple months.
Along with never making a Lager before, I decided to try hopbursting. That is the technique of putting all the hops in the last 20 minutes of the boil. This will omit the bitterness of a 60 minute hop addition and keep all the flavour and aroma. The downside is that you have to put a whole swack of hops to reach the requisite IBUs. I had to double the amount of Saaz in order to get to my IBU goal of 35.
I had planned on making a Bohemian Pilsner with Saaz hops, but unfortunately, the LHBS was out of Pilsner malt so I went with Vienna malt instead:

SUPER SAAZ ME
4.70 KG Vienna Malt
.280 KG Crystal 10L

65 Grams Saaz 20 min
65 Grams Saaz 15 min
28 Grams Saaz 10 min
28 Grams Saaz 5 min
13 Grams Saaz 1 Min
Saaz hops at 3.0 AA

saflager 189 Yeast

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