In keeping with the desire to bring both good food and good beer to the monthly meetings, the food committee for April (or some of us at least), brewed some Bock for the April meeting. (In case you haven't heard, Bock is the style of the month.) And, in keeping with the desire to promote education in beer appreciation, we conducted an experiment that will make a significant comparison of the two ends of the spectrum of homebrewing methods.
In short, we brewed two beers, one being an extract based recipe, the other using decoction mashing for wort production. The recipes were based on ones in Darryl Richman's book on Bock (see the other article on Bock in this newsletter) in which he presents both extract and all-grain recipes designed to produce the same beer. We are making no claims as to which is better, we are asking you to make that judgment at the April meeting.
Brewers were Eric Bogan, Paul Walker, & Scott Sanders; fermentation and cellaring by Scott.
Malt: 1.5 lb Belgian Munich Malt - 10L
1.5 lb Belgian Caravienne Malt - 24L
6.75 lb Pale Extract Syrup
1.0 lb Pale Dry Extract
Hops: 1.75 oz Tettnang, 5.8% 60 min
.75 oz Mt. Hood, 4.5% 15 min
.5 oz Tettnang, 5.8% 2 min
Yeast: Wyeast's 2308 Munich Lager
Starting Gravity: 1.067
Final Gravity: 1.018
Yeild: 5 Gallons
Added crushed grain to cold water, raised to 150 degree F. and held for 30 minutes, removed the grains, added extract and brought to boil. We boiled the entire volume for 75 minutes.
Technical note: Although the all grain recipe had a slightly higher original gravity, you may notice that the reverse is true of the final gravity. This is due to the extended mash time at the low end of the starch conversion temperature range in the all grain batch, a condition which resulted in more fermentable sugars in the wort. Had we hit our target temperatures as planned, we would probably have slightly more unfermentables left for a higher FG.
Malt: 6.0 lb Belgian Pilsner Malt
6.5 lb Belgian Munich Malt - 10L
.25 lb Belgian Caravienne Malt - 24L
Hops: 1.75 oz Tettnanger, 5.8% 60 min
.75 oz Mt. Hood, 4.5% 15 min
.5 oz Tettnang, 5.8% 2 min
Yeast: Wyeast's 2308 Munich Lager
Starting Gravity: 1.070
Final Gravity: 1.016
Yeild: 5 Gallons
Added crushed grain to 4 gal. 135 deg. F. water, temp stabilized at 122 deg.. held for 30 min. Pulled approx. 1/3 thick mash, raised to 158 deg. F. held for 30 min., raised to boil and boiled for 20 minutes. Added back to mash, temp stabilized at 145 deg. Repeated twice to attempt to reach target temp. Finally reached 155 after boiling forth decoction. (Note: we later decided that we had not pulled enough mash each time to raise temp to the target range of 150- 155 deg. Plus, when boiling decoct, the main mash was just sitting. Temperature loss during this time may have had an effect.) Sparged over 1 hour to collect approx. 7 gal. Boiled for 75 minutes.
We used the same yeast for both recipes, Wyeast's 2308 Munich lager yeast. Primary fermentation was for 10 days at approximately 50 deg. F. After racking to secondary, we tried to maintain 45 - 50 deg. for another 3-1/2 weeks (would have liked to transfer to lagering sooner, ideally, after about 18 days.) As of the April 11 meeting, this beer will have been lagering for 4 weeks. Return to the OBC Home Page or the recipe index.