Out of Primary, Into the (Secondary) Void...

Never having brewed a lager before, this is just kind of trial by fire as I'm fumbling my way through this process using only what I've read. At this moment in time, however, things are looking promising. I've progressed past the diacetyl rest into lagering and now have until May to hope this beer turns out well. No off flavors, good malt presence and a wee bit of hop presence, which I understand to be part of the Maibock style guidelines. There are some esters, though, which I'm hoping will get cleaned up in the lagering process. The sample I pulled during transfer was pretty darn tasty. We'll see what happens.

One other little side note: on Friday, I stopped by the Two Brother Tap Room in Warrenville, which just opened up this past week. They'd encountered countless construction and regulatory delays, but the end result was worth the wait. Their brewery is up and running, and as a fan of their less-than-popular styles, I'm very happy to have this place so close. Imperial and standard versions of their Cane and Ebel red Rye PA and Hop Juice make it a must if in the area.

It's Lagering Time...Butthead Maibock

After my lovely bride finally relented and allowed me to purchase the chest freezer and external temperature controller (you ARE the best, baby!) I figured that it would be the least I could do to try it out as a lagering chamber. After doing a little light reading on the subject, one of the first things I knew that had to be done was to make a starter. On Wednesday I put together a double starter using 2-125 ml packs of WYeast 2124 Bohemian lager, 2 pints of water and 2 cups of DME. I ended up with about a 1400 ml starter that was cooking a few days prior to brewing. Since I was brewing on Saturday, I thought I'd poke around the 'net a little to see what was out there on the subject. Stupid me, I came across Jamil's site a wee bit late. I think his calculator said for a lager of the volume and gravity I was making I'd need a starter of about 2300 ml. Needless to say, another lesson learned.

The brew day itself went well, aside from the temperature dropping to below freezing and my water line freezing up right as I was cooling out of the boil kettle. One other thing that I've learned that I need to pay more attention to is the actual volume produced. While the target OG on this was 1.079, I oversparged and had too much actual wort in the boil, thereby reducing my OG to 1.052. Normally the volume wouldn't be an issue, except since I'm lagering I need to ferment in a carboy, which does NOT have a 14 gallon capacity and has a real capacity of about 5.5 gallons.

Aside from those issues, fermentation was going the next day, and is still going as you can see by the blowoff tube. Hopefully all will continue along, and come May this beer will be something to remember. If I'm lucky, I can propagate what little bit of the yeast I didn't use to brew my New Belgium 1554 Black Ale clone.