May The Schwarzbier With You

I was dismayed to find out that I was the fourth person on Brewtoad to name a recipe "May The Schwarzbier With You". But not dismayed enough to change it. I brewed this back on November 9, because I was going to be out of town for all of December and wanted to take advantage of the time away to do some lagerin'. Lagerin' always goes better when you can't go check on the beer, or you forget about it (or both!).

In developing the recipe I consulted a couple of sources, but mainly went with splitting the difference between two of Jamil Zainasheff's recipes from Brewing Classic Styles. One he admitted was far too roasty, but still seemed to do well in competitions. The other was basically just a black pilsner. I've never been one for "It's just like this other thing, only a different color!", so I combined the two, in the hopes of taming the roastiness of the first recipe. Here's what I wound up with:

May The Schwarzbier With You

Batch size: 12 gallons
Expected efficiency: 80%
Target OG: 1.051
Target FG: 1.013
Color: 26 SRM 

Grist:

• 12# Gambrinus Pilsner Malt
• 7# Best Malz Light Munich
• 1# Carafa III
• 10 oz. Chocolate Malt
• 6 oz. Roasted Barley

Mash:

• Saccharification - 153°F for 60'
• Mash out - 168°F for 10'

Boil: 90 minutes total

• 4 oz. Mt. Hood (whole leaf, ??% aa) at 60' to ?? IBU
• 1 oz. Mt. Hood (whole leaf, ??% aa) at 20' to ?? IBU
• 1 oz. Mt. Hood (whole leaf, ??% aa) at flameout

Fermentation:

• Chill to 50°F, pitch Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager
• Gradually raise to 56°F over 10 days
• Free-rise to 60°F for 2-day diacetyl rest
• Rack off the trub and crash-cool to 35°F, add some Biofine Clear
• Lager 8 weeks at 35°F

Actual FG: 1.014

Last year's Mt. Hood
hop harvest.

Now, you might have noticed those question marks. That's because I used all homegrown Mt. Hood hops from my bountiful harvest last year. The thing about homegrown hops is that you can't determine the alpha acid content, which tells you how much bitterness they will impart to the beer. For this reason, homebrewers often shy away from using homegrown hops for bittering, and save them instead for flavor and aroma additions (including dry hopping).

But I have so many of these damn Mt. Hood hops, I wanted to use a lot of them up. I also figured this recipe would be pretty forgiving if I didn't hit enough (or too many) IBUs. If nothing else, the darkly kilned malts will impart their own bitterness (Carafa III is a debittered malt, so it won't).

I used a 90-minute boil due to the large portion of Pilsner malt in the grain bill, which is known for producing the creamed corn/cooked cabbage off-flavor of dimethyl sulfide (DMS). By extending the boil, it's possible to convert more of the precursors into the volatile DMS, which is then driven off in the boil.

Just another day at the office.

On racking, the beer was nice and clear. I let it carbonate for a couple days on 30 psi of CO2, then lowered to serving pressure for the rest of the week. I put it on tap at work, and poured the first glass yesterday. It looks great. A coworker took a taste and his first question was "Is this a stout?" With that really dark pillowy head, you might think so. I told him it was a lager. "This is a lager?!"

As for the taste, I think it's pretty good. It has a nice mild roasty character, but as hoped, it isn't overdone. It's very clean, as you might expect, with significantly less body than you might expect from a stout. It doesn't have the mouthfeel that flaked oats or flaked barley would impart. It might be just a touch on the sweet side, too — more hop bitterness might be good, if I do this one again. That said, my coworkers seemed to like it, so I informed them that I have ten gallons of it to drink. I think this may be similar to 1554 (a favorite of +Allen Huerta over at Active Brewer) in that it is definitely a dark beer (flavor-wise), but it's not all up in your face about that fact. 1554 was the first dark beer I had that I truly enjoyed. I think I would feel confident handing this to someone who said they didn't like dark beers.