Today was another brew day for us at Phalanx and a German Alt style beer is what we were brewing. This particular recipe is supposed to be a hoppy version of a traditional Oktoberfest Märzen. It is the third all-grain recipe that we have brewed and included the most diverse of the mash bills we have used so far:

4 lbs. Geman Munich Malt
2 lbs. German Dark Munich Malt
3.5 lbs. German Pilsner Malt
0.5 Weyermann Caramunich II

The malt went into the mash tun and the strike water was added to the grain. This method of adding the strike water to the grains rather than the other way around is supposed to prevent the grains from being shocked, but requires a bit more stirring to prevent balls of grain from forming. This was our first opportunity to use our new mash paddle which worked a dream. As we transferred the water from our kettle into the mash tun, we managed to lose about 12 degrees of heat. The temperature of the mash after we had finally transferred, came in at 149 F, which was 2 degrees lower than we would have liked, but not so far off to cause major issues.

After the 60 minute sacch’s rest, we began the vorlauf process. The color was absolutely spot on and I could tell that we had gotten some good extraction from how sticky the wort was when it splashed out of the pitcher.

Our mashout temperature ended up being a few degrees below optimum. Our goal had been to have the mashout temp at 170 F, but it ended up being 167 F. We lautered and sparged until we ended up with 6.5 gallons in our brew kettle. The hop additions were 1 oz of German Perle hops at 60 minutes, another ounce of Perle at 30 minutes, and a final 1 oz of Hersbrucker in the final 15 minutes of the boil.

We were able to cool the wort to 68 F in about 14 minutes using two different copper coils. One was placed in the boil kettle and the other submerged in a bucket of ice water. We also set up a large bin out in the backyard to collect the water used to cool the wort after it had cycled through the coils. When we finally shut off the water, we had almost filled a 55 gallon recycling bin. The water will be used later in the garden rather than sent down the drain. It was pretty eye opening to see how much water actually gets used cooling the wort to temperature so that the yeast can be pitched. We pitched using Safale US-05 at 68 F and our original gravity was 1.042. Bottling day will be in 2 weeks and I am excited to see how this beer will turn out. If all goes well, it will be a great way to kick off our Oktoberfest celebrations.

-AJS