I have a friend in Portland, when I visit we hit the Deschutes brewpub downtown. I hope it’s still there.
I have whittled my beer choice to two great beers. One is Stella Artois like the OP's favorite. It is a hopsy refreshing lager brewed in Belgium. The other is Bass Ale. It is a smooth pale ale brewed, I think, right here in the USA from an English recipe. I'm not a heavy drinker. A six pack each of both beers will last me at least a month so there is really no need for a cheap beer. That and a very occasional wine glass of Sauvignon Blanc is about it for me. I cook with beer from time to time and Bass ale is a great product for cooking. In fact dinner tonight will be fish and chips with my home made tartar sauce. I use Bass ale in my beer batter to coat the fish filets.
This thread needs a bumpski.... Recently cracked open some Märzenbier I brewed last October.... ...which means it would be more appropriate to call it Oktoberfest beer. This is an all-grain brew. I went a little heavy on the Munich and Cara Munich malts which is why it came out a bit dark and tastes a little on the malty side, which is okay by me. From brew day to drinking day this batch was aged 6 months. Original gravity was 1.054 and final gravity was 1.010. ABV is 5.7% which is nice. Primary fermentation was 3 1/2 weeks and secondary 15 weeks. Bottle conditioned for a month. Batch sparged Here's the grain bill: First batch grains: 6.25 lbs Munich Malt 4.5 lbs German Pilsner Malt .5 lbs Cara Munich Malt .5 lbs Cara Vienne Malt (11.75 lbs) 2nd batch additional grains: 2 lbs Munich Malt 1 lb German Pilsner Malt 1 lb Cara Munich Malt TOTAL GRAIN BILL: 15.75 lbs. 8.25 lbs Munich Malt 5.5 lbs German Pilsner Malt 1.5 lbs Cara Munich Malt .5 lbs Cara Vienne Malt HOPS: 1 pkg 5 HBU hops bittering (.36 ozs. incl. pkg., est. .25 ozs hops), 1 hour - 15.9% Alpha Acid .5 ozs Hallertau Mittelfruh hops flavoring, 15 mins. - 5.3% AA .5 oz Hallertau Mittelfruh hops aroma, 5 mins. - 5.3% AA YEAST: 1 pkg Wyeast 2633 Oktoberfest Lager Blend (liquid yeast, smack pack)
Popped the top on the first 22 oz. bottle of this batch of home-brewed Spring Maibock. SPRING MAIBOCK - ALL GRAIN IBUs: Original Gravity: 1.070 (target 1.066) Final Gravity: 1.006 (target 1.017) ABV: 8.3% (target 6.4%) Color: Amber Brew Day: Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021 Primary Fermentation: Nov. 24, 2021 to Dec. 18, 2021 (3 1/2 weeks) Secondary Fermentation: Dec. 18, 2021 to May 8, 2022 (4 mos. & 3 wks) Total Fermentation: 5 1/2 months Bottle conditioning: 1 month Total Time: 6 1/2 months Volume: est. 4 1/2 - 5 gallons 20 22 oz bottles at finish INGREDIENTS: Batch sparged 1) Grains: 7.5 lbs 2-Row Malt 5 lbs Munich Malt .25 lb Crystal Malt 10L 2) Additional Grains: 2 lbs 2-Row Malt 1 lb Munich Malt Total Grain Bill: 15.75 lbs. 9.5 lbs 2-Row Malt 6 lbs Munich Malt .25 lb Crystal Malt 10L Hops: 1 oz 3 HBU hops bittering, 45 mins. - 9.2% Alpha Acid 1 oz Mt. Hood aroma, 15 mins. - 6.1% (?) Alpha Acid Yeast: White Labs Octoberfest Lager Yeast WLP820 (liquid) One of my favorite brews - real flavorful amber ale, and at 8.3% ABV (oops!) it will rip your face off if you're not careful
Can't get any better than this fine drop. Coopers Sparkling ale. Fermented in the bottle, Australian homegrown beer. With 5.8% alcohol content and a slight hint of the sugars & malts used in the fermentation process, with no added preservatives or other junk you can drink a carton of this, get absolutely legless and then wake up the next day, like nothing ever happened.
Talon, I'm impressed with your home brewing skill. The best beer I ever had was a home brewed Okotberfest made by a man who worked in the same building as me. He had about 20 years of home brew experience. Skilled people can do great work in the home brewery.
Wow. I've only been home brewing for four years so I'm not near as experienced as your friend. However, I've learned over that short time that brewing can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. You can take the chemistry in the precess to incredible lengths if you want, but that's not necessary for folks like me who just want to make a good tasting ale or lager. I've been lucky in that 1) we have nice pure well water that doesn't require adjustments and 2) I have a wife who bought me a bunch of nice equipment for Christmas and my birthdays. As with anything else, having good equipment makes life easier. This is a pic of my all-grain set-up, and I don't recommend mashing and brewing inside but since it was a cold winter day I decided to mash my grains inside so I had a better chance of keeping my mash temperatures stable. Once I had the wort I moved the operation outside for the boil and cold break. This was one of the last times I fly-sparged a batch of beer. Now I batch sparge which required a bit of experimentation on my part. My first couple batches came out a bit weak/below my target original gravities, so I had to add more grains to my recipes to get everything just right. I've also missed on the high side using too many grains but it's better to have too many grains than too few. If the wort is too heavy you can always dilute it. I've also been growing my own Cascade hops and last year they finally started reaching maturity. If all goes well this year I'll be experimenting with brewing a few batches with my fresh hops.
Here I'm outside where I belong, and I batch sparged this ale, with a strong first batch and a lighter second batch which were combined to make the wort (unfermented beer). Here the fluid from the mash tun is draining into the brew kettle where it will be boiled for an hour and the hops added at different intervals. The bittering hops go in at the beginning of the boil to neutralize the sweetness of the wort and the aroma and flavoring hops go in usually during the last 5-15 minutes of the boil. After the boil is over, you crash the temperature of the wort down into the 70s, pour the cooled wort into a fermenter and add your yeast. I'm a firm believer in two-step fermentation, so I'll let the beer ferment in a primary fermenter for a week or two and then transfer it to a secondary fermenter to get it off the yeast. Then I'll let it ferment till it's ready to get bottled and let the bottled beer condition for at least a month. Since I usually have multiple batches bottled at any given time I don't need to rush the process, so it's usually 4 to 6 months from brew day to drinking day.
Here's an Irish Red that I brewed to be ready for Christmas of last year. What is that Cossack doing sticking his nose in my ale?
I don't drink enough beer to get into home brewing. A six pack lasts me about a month. My friend said making lagers is more difficult because of the need to cold brew. His setup looks like that of a small scale commercial brewer. Everything is stainless steel and he does everything in his basement. Your pale ale looks very nice. I bet it tastes as good as it looks.
I get e-mails from different equipment manufacturers and the new brewing systems they're coming up with are really nice, but I don't drink and brew enough beer to justify buying one. My wife has bought me some real nice equipment like a Hellfire burner, a big stainless steel brew kettle and these stainless SS fermenters, which I really like: The conical bottom allows the yeast to sink beneath the drain valve so less of it will transfer with the beer to another fermenter or bottling bucket, which makes them much better than a flat-bottomed carboy (I own one of those, too), but that's about as fancy as I'll ever get. I don't know if I'll ever get into lagering. It does require some extra equipment but I'm just as happy with an ale as a lager. In fact, the Marzenbier/Oktoberfest I make is brewed like an ale and it's just as good if not better than the lagers. The trick to that style, in my opinion, is getting the perfect balance of hops and malts, not so much how and at what temperature it's fermented and stored.
Obviously, you know more about it than I do. His basement brewery was pretty impressive and his Oktoberfest beer was the best I ever tasted. People like you can put more time and love into the process than a commercial brewery. It shows.
This year I got hooked on Paulaner Hefeweizen... It's a Bavarian wheat beer that true to its style gets most of its flavor from the esters in its yeast instead of the malts and hops. In this case, the esters produce a combination of fruit and clove flavors. The wheat and barley malts contribute a subtle flavor along with the hops. I'm not sure what hops Paulaner uses in its Hefe but judging from the flavor and clone recipes Ive read they probably use a noble hop (or hops) such as Hallertau Mittelfrüh and/or Tettnang. Unlike Samuel Adams Boston Lager which goes strong on those hops, Paulaner uses them for bittering and a hint of flavor. Since this beer is brewed in Munich, it is not widely available where I live in America and is expensive when you can find it (about $9 for a 4-pack of 16 oz. beers), I decided to learn how to brew this and have it readily available at a fraction of the cost (about $35 for a 5 gallon batch). This turned out to be one of my more interesting adventures in brewing. Because it got warm when I decided to brew this, I was forced to use a dry yeast that wouldn't spoil during transportation instead of the liquid yeasts the recipe calls for. Fortunately, Lallemand produces a fine yeast that works just as well as the liquids. However, it didn't seem that way at first because the beer initially had a funky sulfur and sour smell and taste to it, and none of the fruit and clove flavors associated with a Bavarian Hefe. The color was also totally off, too - it was a pale straw color instead of a gold (Paulaner's Hefe is almost orange). Since the beer was still extremely green I left it in the fermenter and let the yeast continue to work on the beer and after a couple weeks the sulfur funk was gone and after a few more weeks the sourness was down close to where it belonged. After 5 weeks in primary fermentation (no secondary needed with this style) I bottled the beer and last week I popped open the first test beer: To my astonishment it tasted exactly like a Paulaner Hefe, and the color had gone from straw to this gold during 3 1/2 weeks of bottle conditioning. The only issue was that the beer wasn't properly fermented yet - this usually takes 4-5 weeks - so I'm going to pop open another test beer this weekend. Here's the recipe - it's Austin Home Brew's all-grain Paulaner Hefeweizen Clone: Original Gravity: 1.049 (target 1.051) Final Gravity: est. 1.004 (target 1.012) - Forgot to write down FG, going on memory ABV: 6% (target 6.4%) Color: Gold/Light Amber Brew Day: Sunday October 2, 2022 Primary Fermentation: October 2, 2022 to November 28, 2022 (7 1/2 weeks) Secondary Fermentation: None Total Fermentation: 7 1/2 weeks Bottle conditioning: Began November 28, 2022 Total Time: 3 months Volume: around 5.5 gallons 24 22 oz bottles 2 12 oz bottles INGREDIENTS: Grains: 5.5 lbs 2-Row Malt 4 lbs Red Wheat .25 lb Munich Malt Total Grain Bill: 9.75 lbs. Hops: 3 HBU Pack pellets*, bittering (60 mins) - est. 1 ounce No additional hops added for flavor & aroma during the boil *This style typically uses German Noble hops Yeast: Lallemand Munich Classic German Wheat-Style Ale Yeast (dry) (For Bavarian Wheats) Priming (corn) sugar: 5 ozs No clarifiers used - this style of wheat beer is supposed to be cloudy BREW DAY: Total time approx. 6 hours BATCH SPARGED using two tuns and BIABs - Strike water heated to 180 degrees, reduced to around 164 when transferred to tuns - Mashed-in at 154 degrees (10 degree temp loss) - 4 gallons mash water, 4.66 sparge water - 6.25 gallons wort FERMENTATION: The yeasts used in Bavarian wheats will produce different flavors at different temperatures. If you ferment in the low 60s, the yeasts will produce more of a clove flavor while fermenting in the upper 60s will produce more of a fruity banana-like flavor. I prefer more of a clove flavor that is consistent with Paulaner's Hefe, so I fermented around 62 degrees and got exactly the flavor profile I wanted. Miscellaneous Note: Perhaps the most important thing I learned brewing this style is not to rush things. Many impatient home brewers on home brew forums said they fermented the beer for 2 weeks, bottled for 4 weeks and started drinking after only 6 weeks but it took me twice that time to get the results I wanted. Had I bottled after two weeks I might have trapped the foul sulfur and sour flavors in the beer instead of letting the yeast work them out in the fermenter. The only way to know when to bottle is to taste the beer as it ferments - once the off-flavors are gone then it's time to bottle. The extra time will also enable the yeasts to produce more of the fruity and clove flavors that are the distinguishing feature of this style of beer. When it comes to brewing a Bavarian wheat, you will be rewarded for your patience.
I would say Talon knows his beer. The best beer I ever tasted was an oktoberfest brewed by a serious amateur brewer that worked in the same building. It was brewed with love to be sure. Not many amateurs are equipped to brew lagers but this man certainly was.
Amen to that, Lindis - you can't beat a good Bavarian Hefe. I imagine you would know all about that. What's you favorite German beer? And I would kill to be able to grow the Noble hops that are produced in your country. Where I live I can only grow one variety of hop - Cascade. It's the only hop that can tolerate the heat and humidity here in Virginia. It's a nice multipurpose hop that can be used for both bittering and aroma/flavor, but it's nothing like a Hallertau Mittelfrüh or Tettnang hop, which are my favorites. I like Cascades in moderation as a bittering hop, and when used more liberally for aroma and flavor it will produce a grapefruit-like citrusy flavor. Some people like it and some people don't. There's a brewery out in California - Sierra Nevada - that made Cascade hops their featured hop and they deserve credit for making this hardy variety popular in the United States. Their flagship brew is their Pale Ale, and it's quite good if you like the taste of Cascade hops https://sierranevada.com/beer/pale-ale/ I have to give them credit for pushing this hop to its best tasting limits. They put enough in there to get that nice citrusy flavor but not too much where it would make the ale bitter. Getting that balance is a neat trick, but they've been working with Cascade hops for 40 years and they've got it down to a science (or art). However, my favorite brew that uses Cascade hops is Front Row Golden Ale which brewed right here in Virginia by Starr Hill Brewery: https://starrhill.com/front-row-golden-ale Somebody there figured out the perfect balance between honey malts and Cascade hops to produce one of my favorite golden ales. I'd like to shake the hand of the genius who came up with this flavor combination because it's a marriage made in beer heaven. Next year I'm going to try and clone this ale when I harvest my next Cascade crop.
I just happened to try Stella Artois for the first time yesterday, fmw, and it is a fine lager, and if anyone thinks it's easy to brew a pale lager like that they are seriously mistaken. In my experience they are the most difficult beers to brew because there is absolutely no room for error with anything. They are completely unforgiving when it comes to off-flavors, and the grains, hops, carbonation, brewing process, everything, has to be just right to get a beer that tastes this perfectly clean and balanced. I can understand why the OP likened it to Champagne. I tried it because I had read that they use a Noble hop that I have never brewed with - Saaz - and you don't find that hop in many beers here in America. I think Pilsner Urquell is the only other beer I've had that contains Saaz hops, and that's brewed in the Czech Republic. Oh, and I'm a big fan of Bass Ale, too. I can't say I've drank a lot of English ales but Bass is certainly my favorite. Thanks for the cooking tip, too - it never even occurred to me to use it in a beer batter and I bet it is good. Incidentally, I don't cook with beer much, but I have found that Legend Brown Ale and Samuel Adams Boston Lager make fine additions to pumpkin soups and stews. The Legend Brown Ale is more malty and will give the soup a richer flavor. The Boston Lager is less malty, of course, but the hops add a nice complexity to the flavor that goes well with pumpkin soup.
