Monster Media 1993 #2/Image.iso/health/beerrec.zip/1STBOCK.REC

Text File | 1993-07-10 | 6KB | 116 lines

Thinking About Beer:
        More About Recipe Formulation
            by Darryl Richman

Brewing the 1st place Bock beer wasn't a slap-dash effort.  It's the
second bock I've attempted, and the first was a disaster.  Let me lead
you through the development of the recipe for this beer, in a
qualitative rather than quantitative way.  You don't need the specific
numbers for this and that if you understand why you need to do
something.

First, let me tell you what I want to make:  Paulaner Salvator.  See, I
have a goal in mind.  I like that beer because, although it is big and
malty as a doppelbock should be, it isn't overbearingly so, like EKU 28,
which I find to be cloyingly sweet and unbalanced.  Salvator actually
has a reasonably dry finish, and a hint of hops in the aftertaste to
keep you from getting tired of it.  The beer is dark brown, but not
opaque.  There is no hop aroma, and very little flavor from the hops in
the mouth.

My first approach was to look at the beer and say to myself "it's dark...
add some black malt.  A little bit of Munich malt as an adjunct.  And
throw in lots of that klages malt to get the body that we need."  But
all of that malt needs a lot of sparge water to get the full extract
from the grain.  Lots more volume than I can fit into my boiling pot.
Barleywines are made from only the first runnings, and what's left is
used to make low gravity Mild. Finally, I thought, "only use boiling
hops-we don't want any aromatics."

So I made a big, black lager beer.  It wasn't opaque, as I had wanted,
but it wasn't the right color, either.  It was malty, but it didn't have
the right malt character to it.  It had that black malt bite that
wouldn't smooth out with aging.  In short, it was very little like
Salvator.

What was wrong?  I turned out a fine beer.  It was clean and malty.  But
I had shot far wide of the style.  Clearly, I needed to understand the
style better before I could make my beer.

What malt is used to make a bock?  The style comes from Bavaria; the
Paulaner brewery is one of the big six in Munich.  I had used a bit of
Munich malt--about 10%--as an adjunct.  But Munich malt is a natural,
local malt for a brewer to use there.  It is also darker than the very
pale 2 row klages, although not by a lot.  Munich malt is noted for its
toasty character, and that toasty aroma was precisely what my beer
needed.  Clearly I was onto something here:  try to make the beer with
more of the indigenous ingredients.

I was not displeased with the hopping in my first attempt. It was the
only thing about the beer that seemed to be right.  I had used
exclusively Hallertau hops, and that seemed to be right.  It's best not
to mess with things that work.

Fred Eckardt, in his "The Essentials of Beer Style," said that I needed an
original gravity in the mid 70s.  I had done that by using enough malt
to make a 90s gravity beer, if all the extract could have been pulled
into the required volume.  Of course, barleywines are special beers,
made only occasionally.  Bocks and doppelbocks are much more frequently
made, and I reasoned that the thrifty brewer wouldn't waste valuable
extract on a regular basis.

Well, if I couldn't get the needed extract into less water, I would have
to remove some of the water afterwards, by boiling.  Hmmm, a long boil
would definitely caramelize some of the sugars and darken the beer.
Bingo!  By reducing the beer in the boil, I could get the extract and
darken the beer to the right color, while controlling the volume.  The
pieces of the puzzle fit into place.

So that is what I set out to do. Here is my recipe for 15 gallons of
all-grain Bock Aasswards:

    24 lbs.    Munich malt
     6    Vienna malt
     6    2 row Klages malt
     1.5    80L Crystal malt

I treated my medium hard water with 18 grams of Calcium Bicarbonate.  I
mashed in with 10.5 gallons of water, which is about 1 1/8 quarts per
pound--pretty thick mashing!  This was dictated by the size of my mash
tun, which I filled right to the brim.  I followed a mash program of
0:50 at 50C, 0:20 at 58, 0:40 at 65, 1:30 at 70, and a mash off for
0:15 at 77.

I sparged for almost an hour and a half, collecting 19 gallons at the
end.  I determined the end point when I could no longer perceive any
sweetness in the runoff (at about 1.010 gravity).

At this point, I had to boil in two pots.  I boiled for a total of 3:20,
until the volume was down to about 13 gallons.  As the volume decreased
in my regular kettle, I added back the wort from my other pot.  Getting
down to 13 gallons was also dictated by my setup, as I cannot get a good
whirlpool at the end of the boil without 2 gallons of headspace.  I
added my hops (200 grams of Hallertau pellets) about 2:00 into the boil,
not being quite certain how long the boil would have to continue.  The
result of this was a beautiful brown wort with lots of red highlights.

I pitched this with a 2 liter starter I had retrieved from a batch of
lager I had just made with an AB yeast strain.  This wasn't my intent,
but the starter of Bavarian yeast I had made didn't smell right.  The AB
yeast likes relatively warm conditions (50-55F), but I held it down at
48 for the primary.  The original gravity, adjusted to 15 gallons, was
1.075.  After three weeks I racked it and topped it up to 15 gallons,
and brought it down to 36F.

I bottled 5 gallons 6 weeks later with 130 grams of dextrose with a
final gravity of 1.022.  That yields a beer of about 6.5-7% v/v, which
is perfect.  Then I put the bottled beer back into my thermostat-rigged
chest freezer and held it up to the present at 36F.  The other ten
gallons went into two kegs, which I carbonated by overpressuring.

I'm not going to claim that this is the way to make an authentic bock.
In fact, I'm not going to claim that this is at all authentic, because I
don't know.  What I do know is that I was able to reason my way to
making what I think is an authentic-tasting bock beer, and the 2nd round
judges at the AHA National Competition seem to agree.