So this lager...

[montjoye]

The grain
Is a combo of three recipes, then further tweaked in Brewsmith to better match a Vienna lager profile. So many changes, silly me. It includes a small amount (100g, around 2%) of a very dark malt just for colour (carafa special I). One of the brew shop chaps raised his eyebrows at this and this inspired me to panic. So I spent some time last night trying to pick out the darkest grain. In half an hour I had managed to collect a whole 2g of
that 100g, and an achy arm. Bother it. I will leave out that 2g but the rest will have to stay. Brewsmith says it will be ok!






The hops
All the hops in my eventual recipe are out of my fridge*. The bittering hops are a mix of three leftovers- Magnum, Warrior and Williamette, plus a little Centennial to make up the IBUs. The flavour hops are reasonably close to the original recipe. Two of the original hops couldn’t be got easily locally. However, looking them up, both are variants on Hallertauer. So that is a reasonable substitution and I had some. So the mid and late hop additions will be an elegant 50:50 mix of Cascade and Hallertau Mittelfruh. I’ve weighed them all out ready to go for tomorrow morning. And now there are four less hop packets cluttering up my fridge 

I must think on an insulating layer for under the urn. I lost too much heat from the mash last time. Wooden chopping boards perhaps? Or a folded towel? I’m also going to change the suspension rope end, the current arrangement is way too fiddly. Oh and when I next get to a decent hardware shop, I want a length of heavier rope, the current one is too narrow and tends to jump off the pulley.


*this is also good on cost. Hops are not cheap. This brew cost ~$18.50 in grain (paid for in advance in the grain book) plus $8.90 for yeast, plus a little in steriliser, yeast food, irish moss and bottle caps. Say no more than $5. So $32.40 plus a several hours of my labour for 5+ dozen stubbies. Hmm, plus electricity. One would normally also need to spend $10 or more on hops.