October Fest (all grain 10 gallon)

October is here and I hope you all are enjoying your October Fest beers. My wife and I both look forward to this time of year. We brew our October Fest beer, make beer brats, and enjoy some German cuisine. If you don’t have a recipe of your own, you can try ours. It is my wife’s favorite and I enjoy making it for her each year. It should be started a couple months early, but I say it’s never too late to brew and drink great beer, no matter what time of the year.

October Fest 2011 - Oktoberfest/Märzen (3B)
Brewer	Steve
Date	08/14/2011

 

Batch Size	10.500 gal	Boil Size	11.750 gal
Boil Time	60.000 min	Efficiency	77%
OG	1.067	FG	1.014
ABV	6.3%	Bitterness	28.5 IBU (Tinseth)
Color	13.9 srm (Morey)	Calories (per 12 oz.)	204

Fermentables

Total grain: 25.000 lb
Name	Type	Amount	Mashed	Late	Yield	Color
American (2 Row)	Grain	13.000 lb	Yes	No	81%	2.0 srm
Munich Malt	Grain	8.750 lb	Yes	No	80%	9.0 srm
Victory Malt	Grain	16.000 oz	Yes	No	73%	25.0 srm
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 120L	Grain	4.000 oz	Yes	No	72%	120.0 srm
Caramunich Malt	Grain	2.000 lb	Yes	No	72%	56.0 srm

Hops

Name	Alpha	Amount	Use	Time	Form	IBU
Hallertau	4.5%	2.500 oz	Boil	60.000 min	Pellet	17.0
Tettnang	4%	2.000 oz	Boil	30.000 min	Pellet	8.2
Tettnang	4%	2.000 oz	Boil	10.000 min	Pellet	2.2

Misc

Name	Type	Use	Amount	Time
Irish Moss	Fining	Boil	0.500 tsp	15.000 min

Yeast

Name	Type	Form	Amount	Stage
WLP820 - Oktoberfest/Märzen Lager Yeast	Lager	Liquid	2.367 tbsp	Primary

Mash

Name	Type	Amount	Temp	Target Temp	Time
	Temperature	---	---	152.000 F	60.000 min

 

 

I first substituted German 2 row PILS with American 2 Row.

I mashed for 60 minutes at 153 degrees.

Sparge at 168 degrees for 50 minutes, collecting 12.5 gallons of wort.

Boil for 60 minutes.

Primary fermentation was 2 weeks at 65 degrees

Secondary fermentation was 3 weeks at 60 degrees

I kegged the beer 5 weeks after brew and let it sit for a month in the fridge under low pressure. I would only do this for kegging, as the clearing process is not complete after 5 weeks in the carboy. I know a lot of brewers don’t like to use the lager yeast at a higher temperature but I have not had any issues doing it this way. I don’t have a cold storage set up for my brews so I ferment them in my finished basement where it is cooler. I hope you enjoy this American style October Fest as much as we do. Prost

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Bottle beer from a keg

I found this article a little while back and knew this was right up my alley. I have a 5 keg kegerator and when I have brews ready to keg, I have to time them just right so I don’t have them stacked up waiting. I don’t bottle my beer, I prefer the keg. It seems I usually have about 1 gallon left in a couple of my kegs when it’s time to keg another beer; so I figured I would bottle that amount to free up a keg. I searched around the internet and found this article and tried it out. My only concern was how long would the beer stay in a bottle with carbonation and would the taste be off after a certain amount of time. I purchased 1 liter EZ-cap bottles and followed the guidance from the article below. I filled up 12 bottles from a few different flavors and tried the beer after a month and it was fine. I now use this method all the time to free up kegs. Thanks brew-dudes.

http://www.brew-dudes.com/bottling-beer-from-a-keg/357

There are lots of posts on the web about how to fill bottles from a keg of beer. The most popular gear heady way to do it is to buy a counter pressure bottle filler or use a beer gun. The beer gun seems a little easy to use.

However, I only bottle the occasional 6-pack or so from the keg and I’d rather spend my money on malt and hops than a beer gun. What follows is a short step-by-step of how I fill bottles from my keg with stuff I have around the brewery.

Filling from a Keg:

1. Keg of beer must be chilled and carbonated. I like to over carbonate by a few tenths (0.2) of a volume of CO2 to compensate for lost CO2. (some of that lost CO2 is a good thing as I’ll state later)
2. I use a black Cobra/Picnic tap to dispense the beer from. I modify the tap into a filler by using a piece of tubing that will stick right over the spout of the tap (usually 3/8 ID tubing). The length of the tubing need only be long enough to reach the bottle of the bottle.
3. I chill down the bottles I plan to fill. This reduces CO2 loss and foaming.
4. Right before I am ready to bottle (bottles and caps washed and sanitized), I dial down the CO2 on my regulator to zero PSI, then I burp the keg to release all the head pressure.
5. I put the tap with tubing filler into my first bottle and pull the trigger. Then I slowly dial up the regulator until I have just enough pressure to get the beer flowing at a decent rate. But not too fast to get excessive foaming. This can be a little tricky to manage the regulator and the bottle filler at the same time. But once you get the pressure set and the beer flowing; that’s it with fussing over the regulator settings.
6. Fill the rest of my bottles and cap them. Getting a little foam while filling is a good thing as it helps to purge out the ambient air and O2. This minimizes oxidation of the beer after bottling.
7. Once all the bottles are filled I reset the pressure on the regulator to my normal carbonating and dispensing pressure to keep the beer from going flat.

This method works good for all sizes of bottles just as long as your tubing reaches the bottom of the bottle. And it’s certainly cheaper than purchasing a beer gun.

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