Batch #17 – Vienna Lager split batch (half with fruit)

Date	Brew:4/8/2014	Rack:4/30/2014	Bottle:5/13/2014
Days	0	22	35

recipe source:

CJOHB, Papazian, p.186

Goals:

Do our first lager, and our first split batch. See the effect of fruit on a brew and have a control to compare it to and mix it back with if needed.

Brew notes:

brew at ross’ house. 1.5 gal boil. used campden tablets. Boiled 2 gallons with campden tablets. Topped off with tap water. Sent to basement in hdpe bucket, hot (chris says “aussie style”). No SG was taken upstairs, so we sanitized the hydrometer and dunked it unto the bucket downstairs. The OG reading is somewhat questionable, as it is difficult to be 13 points off in an extract brew. Either temperature or stratification may have cause a mis-reading. Yeast starter (started 24 hours before brew) added the following morning. One boilover. Of course, at first boil. The intent with this batch is to do a split secondary, with TBD fruits (blueberry, cherry, etc.)

I brought it up from the basement to the stairwell after 11 days for diacetyl rest. Racked on tuesday 4/30, or day 22. 11 days of diacetyl rest is overkill, but probably didn’t do any harm.

	OG	FG	ABV
Recipe	1.052	1.014	5%
Recorded	1.039	1.012	2.65%

 

*I would like to add that I doubt we had an accurate reading of the OG. I know… Excuses, excuses…

Fermentation

Slow and low in a 6 gallon hdpe bucket in the basement. The bucket may have hidden much of the bubbling due to the fact that they are really hard to get 100% air-tight, but the times I checked on it one bubble per 5 seconds was peak, and that wasn’t for very long. Most of the primary ferm was totally lifeless. Racked half onto 2.25 lbs of raspberries on tuesday 4/30, or day 22. Each half is in a 3 gallon corny keg with a blow off tube connected to the gas line. At racking, Raspberries were frozen, then put in water that was brought up to 75C (peaked as high as 90, but the bags may not have gotten that hot internally.) for 15 minutes. The idea behind that was to sterilize the fruit. We may have accidentally set some pectins, only time will tell.

Bottling

We ended up with 2.9 Gal of regular vienna lager and 2.1 of the raspberry variety. Both tasted great from the bottling sample.

Don’t worry about the bits of brain in the bottle! I mean raspberry! Seriously. The beer leeched all of the color out of the berries and somehow it seems to have made the raspberry version lighter and redder then the regular version. oh, and the berries looked like hamburger. oops.

I went ahead and dove deep into tasting this weird looking aftermath and it tasted… bitter. Thats about it. It didn’t have much raspberry sweetness left in it, but it did have a lot of flavor left over from the seeds.  Not bad to eat, but you’d end up very drunk, and not full. one star * , do not recommend as a meal.

We bottled the regular half with green caps and 17n (for normal) on them, and the other with mixed caps and 17r (for RASPBERRY!) Labels to follow.

Conclusion

too soon to conclude anything, except that beer is good. Always a safe assumption.

Tasting notes

After 9 days in the bottle.

The carb was still light.

The ‘plain’ version was smooth and balanced, but had a bit of bite/bitterness in the finish. Neither of us have drank many vienna lagers before, so this is a new category for us.

The raspberry version was powerfully raspberry-flavored. I’m not saying that it is too much, but it I wouldn’t want any more. The bite in the finish is still present, but the razz is strong enough through the rest of the sip that you really need to go looking for bite to find it.