Alt Two

My second try at an Altbier turned out better than the first. Alt One got an infection from the MiniBrew plastic conicals I was using. A tragedy, because it tasted so good coming out of the kettle.

Alt Two is not my own recipe, but a concoction from Jamil Zainasheff's Brewing Classic Styles. Scaled up to 10 gallons the recipe is:

Fermentables

• 18 lbs Pilsner
• 2 lbs Munich
• 0.5 lbs Debittered Black malt
• 0.5 lbs Caramunich 60L
• 6 oz Pale Chocolate malt 200L

Mashed starting at 151º, falling to 145ºF over the course of 60 minutes. (Need winter insulation for my mash tun.) Mash out at 160ºF. Sparge. Collected 12.5 gallons 11% B sweet wort. Boil 90 minutes.

Hops

• 2.5 oz 8.1% AA Perle 60 minutes

Fermentation

Pitch a 1600ml starter of WLP 029 German Ale yeast into 14.3% B original gravity wort.

Fermented two weeks between 58º & 66ºF. Lagered for 26 days.

Notes

• 2010-02-15 9.6%B Vinous notes
• 2010-03-13 8%B Vinous flavors reduced. Ready to package.

It pours a deep copper brown with no appreciable head. Carbonation has not quite developed and I expect to get a good stand of foam in a few more days under pressure. There is roastyness up front and that vinous flavor refuses to disappear completely. This Alt puckers the mouth just a little, a problem attribute to poor scaling of the recipe from 5 to 10 gallons. The percentage of dark roasted malts may be too high. Bitterness is present and polite as appropriate for this malt-centric beer.

For my third Altbier I will find a common ground between One and Two. Not so much roasted malt as #2 and not so much Munich or Vienna as #1.

Tasting & Bottling Something Else

It is 14.6° Plato and Something Else is three weeks old. Starting at 25.2º P, the big gravity beer weighs in at a small 6.2% ABV. Before putting it all away for conditioning a little evaluation is in order.

There is a little ester in the nose. No hop aroma. The uncarbonated beer is sweet, bitter, roasty, "stout-like", and lacks much fermentation character. Tastes a little like an over-hopped milk stout might. It sticks to your mouth.

It is close enough to be a Russian Imperial Stout, but lacks nuance due to the simplistic grainbill.

I have about 80 fluid ounces to bottle. The small volume batch is a breeze to work with. Next time I will remember to add priming sugar. Not to worry, the gravity is still drifting downward.