Base Lager & Experimental Secondaries

Well, on 1/30/07, I finally brewed an all-grain batch by myself. Oh, I did get a little help at the beginning of the boil from an unexpected visitor. It is true that Bruce Lee is a relatively small man, but he also puts out an enormous amount of chi-energy and physical endurance. Hey hey Bruce, you know, you could be a really good homebrewer! Oh, and I did put my mom to work on the syphoning while she was visiting, playing with Cadence and dropping off some awesome homemade soup. But for the most part, a solo act.

I'm in lager mode right now, and getting in 4 batches this Winter season. For this 4.5 gallon/1-pot batch, I made up a "base" wort that's a nice deep golden color with medium/low bitterness. The wort is fermenting nicely at about 50*F on the Schwartzbier's Bavarian yeast cake.

Base lager recipe: (OG 1.050)
7.00 lb. American Two-row Pale
1.00 lb. German Munich
0.25 lb. Flaked Wheat
0.13 lb. Belgian Aromatic
0.25 lb. American Crystal 80L

There were a variety of hop pellets left over from past batches, so I utilized all of them in this recipe. Approx. 22 IBU came out of these hops...

Hops: (22 IBU)
.50 oz. Tettnanger (90 min.)
.25 oz. Challenger (90 min.)
.13 oz. Willamette (30 min.)
.25 oz. Hallertau (30 min.)

After the bulk primary is finished, it will be divided into 4 experimental secondaries.

1. Base "Copper" Lager
2. Dry Hopped Lager
3. Ginger Peach Lager
4. Citrus Lager

I love reusing my Mom's & Grandma's 4 liter wine jugs. They make perfect test batch fermenters. They're also great as starter vessels and for making mead.

It's been a long time since brewing (9/2006) a light colored beer. The past four have been 16 SRM and up. So finally I get to see clearly into the action of fermentation. Watching lager yeast do it's thing is pretty cool. I like the way it smells right now (very clean with a nice bitterness).

Progress: The secondaries sat on the cracked windowsill with a light barrier and a styro-cubicle built around them to hold in the cold outside temperature. I didn't worry about temperature fluctuations. They conditioned for two weeks, and the weather stayed quite cold. They were bottled on 3/11/07. So far so good. Each one is very unique.