The weather is slowly matching the season, which means none other than festbier season! Bavarian Oktoberfest has just ended but America has a bunch of events all over the place.

This year I was determined to brew better than the two Oktoberfest beers I made last year, that I consider utter failures. For starters I needed to take better notes, but I think last year's batches had some yeast issues. The festbier concept this year was to modify our recipe to fit our current system numbers, no starter, and detailed notes of the brew day.

Festbier 2016

4 lbs pils

3lbs Vienna 5l ovibond

3lbs Munich 10 lovibond

.4lbs caramunich (6.4oz) 53-60 lovibond

1 German Hallertau 2.5%

1 tettnang 2%

.5oz hersbrucker 2%

2 pure pitch souther german lager WLP 838

Campden tablet per 5 gal, no other water adjustments

Brew day breakdown:

Brewed 8/7/16

1145: 9 gal water heating

1204: water at 146ish, dough in

1209: 4 gal of water, mash at 138 which is a little high. Pulling the 5th gal to cool before mixing and pulling the first decoction

1216: evened out to 136.9, covered for the remaining rest period

1236: pulled thick mash for first decoction

1250: nice rolling boil on decoction 1, added 3 scoops to hit 147. 30 min rest

124: pulling second thick mash

142: decoction 2 nice rolling boil, killed the heat. Added scoop by scoop to hit 154

243: pulled about 8 quarts of thin mash to decoct

258: added thin decoction to mash, hit 163. Started heating 4 gal sparge water

310: vorlof then draining before sparging

319: netted a little over 2 gal wort before sparging

323: 15 min batch sparge at 165

338: drain sparge

342: added half of sparge to 5 gal in kettle. Lit burner and continued draining the mash.

345: second half of sparge brought the kettle volume to over 6.5 gal.

401: hit rolling boil

432: hop addition for last 60 min

518: inserted immersion chiller to sanitize for the last 15

532: boil done. Starting chiller

542: in 10min down from boiling to 95

609: everything is chilled or rinsed off and inside within half an hour of flameout.

1026: Pitched yeast and put in lager fridge. Read 15 brix or OG 1.061.

8/29: diacetyl rest 5 days before cold crash/lager.

9/19: kegged. Reading FG 1.013

ABV: 6.3%

It was perfectly clear going into the keg. Coming out of the keg after carbonating it seems to have a bit of chill haze. The color is fantastic, it looks a little dark but it drinks incredibly light. Smooth light malt with a hint of caramel. It is everything both of my brews from last year weren't. I think my lager yeast that I had stored let me down last year which is why this year I skipped the starter and used 2 packages of yeast. I think the decoction really helped the complexity in the final malt profile. My plan is to brew this again without a decoction to compare a step mash to the decoction.

I do think the Wyeast Oktoberfest lager yeast yields a more crisp end result, but I was very happy with the final product from the White Labs pure pitch. Perhaps later I can do a split batch to compare lager yeasts.

Until next time, Prost!

We are well on our way into November at this point and I never got around to posting this article, so without further ado: Oktoberfest 2015.

Last year we were lucky enough to attend Oktoberfest in Munich. This year being state side we were looking for a nice festbier to pass the time. I feel that American Oktoberfest beers tend to miss the mark. The Germans also had a few years to perfect their lagers before us.

For a baseline we started with two German beers. Both were 5.8% but very different beers. The Weihenstephaner was very pale with a light sweet finish, a beer you could easily drink a few liters of without much problem. This was not exactly the fest beer we remembered from our trip, but it wasn't a bad beer.

The Ayinger I had not had before. While it had a smooth full malt flavor, it seemed a bit buttery.

The Victory festbeer was full bodied and malty, almost coffee like. Great amber but not exactly a German Oktoberfest.

The Yuengling was malty but maybe slightly oxidized and a very thin watery mouthfeel. You could probably pound these like normal Yuengling.

The Widmer Brothers Okto had an assertive bitterness. Great malt backbone but has a solid American hop presence.

The Sierra Nevada was actually a collaboration brew with Brauhaus Riegele. A crisp lager, while a little dry was just a solid beer.

The Peak Organic smelled like pumpernickel and drank like an IPA.

The Goose Island was malty but the flavor falls flat then leaves you with a lingering dark roasted flavor.

I'd call the Sierra Nevada the clear winner of this group. It was definitely the most German of the American brewed beers, which isn't surprising when you have a German brewery in collaboration.

After visiting Oktoberfest in person we came home and developed a recipe of our own. We brewed the first version of it last year and thought it turned out phenomenal and true to the German brewing methods.

This year I brewed it twice in preparation of our own Oktoberfest party. Both had the same measured grains and hops. The first OG was 1.071 while the second OG was 1.078. The second was fermented on the yeast cake of the first and they both finished at 1.015. I think the main difference was how they were milled, I believe I hand cranked the first one while the second was powered with a drill. We seem to be consistently hitting 85+% efficiency which is why our calculations were off from the original recipe. These are also decoction mashed so the efficiency should be a little above the 70% average. (Is that the average? I though that's what most calculators default to)

All that said, we weren't super happy with our Oktoberfest beers. We missed our mark flavor-wise, and they really didn't want to drop clear. I think our yeast was the major defect, aside from milling consistency, and next time I'll spring for a fresh batch of Bavarian Lager yeast. Mistakes were made but I stand by this recipe and will continue to try and perfect it.