Sunday, March 23, 2014

Simple Lager

The weather is just right for brewing a lager.  The water bath is stable at 49°F, a good temperature for SafLager S-23.  The beer should finish with a nice malty flavor.  At temperatures above 55°F S-23 can get a little fruity.
Time has been a precious commodity these days so this batch is going to be an extract brew.  If you do it right, the quality of beer made with extract is on par with an all-grain beer.  The cost is about the same as well.  There are a number of hidden costs with all grain brewing such as trub loss and the cost of fuel that are often left out when comparing overall cost.  When making a batch of all grain beer it costs me about $5.00 in fuel alone.  If there is interest I'll write about that more in another post.

This beer will be a very simple base beer using my quick brew method. (See my book for details)

6lbs of Briess Pilsen DME.
1 oz of Challenger hops boiled in a quart of water for an hour.
S-23 SafLager

Using the simple pitching method outlined in my book I expect the cell count to be about 100 billion cells.  This can be verified with my Amscope microscope.

I expect this to a nice clean drinkable beer at about 5% ABV.  To add variety I have been developing "beer boosters" added when the beer is served that push the base beer into different styles. 





2 comments:

  1. Hmmmm , "Boosters"... Intriguing !

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    1. "Beer Boosters" or "Beer Benders" are a concept that I have been working on for a while. It's getting close to a phase where I can roll it out. Basically some additions work fine as tinctures and others work better as micro batch fermentations. I'm working these concepts into my 15 minute brew method which is being published in parts on Home Brew Talk right now.

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