Grandpa's Country Lager

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7/1/2021
brew night last night everything went pretty well. nailed the OG and maybe a little over 5 gal. i did about 6.5 gallons in the mash and then sparged maybe three pitchers of sparge water, at beginning of boil i was at about 7.25 gallons and 1047 pre boil. post boil i was right around 5 gal and 1055, watered down a little bit.

i used perle but ideally i wouldve used some noble american hop. crystal?

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6/30/2021
thinking maybe just boil 60 minutes instead of 90? i think a little DMS corn flavor is acceptable here if it should happen to do that.

for yeast kind of stupid i have maybe a half cup slurry but no DME for a starter so i will just pitch the whole slurry and hope its all good

ph calculation mustve been off before, adding some phosphoric acid
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6/28/2021

branching from grandma's country lager to Grandpa's. I am not sure grandpa drank any different beer than grandma but for this one we will attempt to stay within the american lager category, whilst adding a little bit of pilsner malt for a little more flavor.

i was going to do legit flaked corn then i thought id keep with the grits but for this lets go for international pale lager and go all malt.

considering carapils but do i want head retention and too much flavor? i think i do but judges may not like.

using legit lager yeast for this.

need to go through hop stash and decide what to use, default evergreen.

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11/28/2021
reworking this for round 3. round 2 stunk, had to add DME later, not sure i cooked and mashed the grits long enough. beer turned out infected or something smelled and tasted like wine vinegar.

this time removing the DME boosting the base malt to get to 5.3% although it will be fine if it floats back to 5.0 or 4.8 even. last brew was 59% efficiency, hoping to at least get 62 this time. using my old setup and brewing in parallel to another batch on the GF

Last time was nobility this time trying evergreen. Adjusting hop amounts to stay under 18 ibu.

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7/8/2021
Brew day last night, kind of sucked. Tried the brew easy setup for mash and ended up light on efficiency and OG. refractometer said 1035 preboil and about 1038 post boil. then i took less than a gallon of wort and heated up on stove and added 1lb DME. lets see how much that ruins the color. anyway the refrac was still showing low gravity, recalibrated it, and now its saying 1049.

also i forgot about whirlfloc until after the boil so i heated for like 5 extra minutes to give it time to dissolve.

also i forgot to cook the grits before i started the mash so i cooked them during the mash kind of quickly and with less water than instructed, added them about halfway into the mash.

a lot of mistakes here, havent brewed in over a month. also not sure about the brew easy if it was low efficiency because we did not sparge meaning there were leftover sugars in the grain when i was done mash/went to kettle.

i am reading now that we may do better with proper water profile. also i did not take ph reading so unclear if that was an issue. possibly next time we want to try this, we make a straight up pilsner or blonde ale without the grits and use a real water profile built from RO.

also we did not have a proper sparge arm so its possible efficiency was affected by channeling.

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7/7/2021
first batch was indeed good the way it was, but altering for todays brew day. low on grits. was gonna just run it but 4.8% is just so low. adding half pound of 2row.

using slightly less acid malt because i feel some of my brews might be too acidic in the end? havent quantified that. pH readings tend to be low.

also going to use some nobility instead of having to hacksaw more of that crystal. adding some to end of the boil because why not....hopefully doesnt pull off too much hop flavor or bitterness in whirlpool (....it shouldnt, with that tiny amount)

not really doing any water chemistry here. going to just run tap and see if i can really tell the difference. fits with the theme of this beer being super easy and cheap as well.

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2/8/2021
recipe creation.

malt :
considered using at least a portion of 6row malt which has higher diastatic power; this is/was used for classic (particularly pre-prohibition) american lager to ensure enough enzymes to convert the starch in the corn (which seems to have very low diastatic power). i think this recipe is using relatively low amount of corn adjunct for the style. this is partly because i would like to have a decently malt / body to the beer and also would like to just use my normal 2row base malt and not have to order more stuff from the homebrew store.

corn :
flirted with the idea of using flaked corn, its a little more expensive, for some reason id rather use something from the grocery store. popped popcorn and corn flakes cereal are options but kind more in the direction of a goofy brew. im reading a little about raw corn : it needs gelatinizing before the starches can be freed up enough to convert to sugar in a mash. you'd need to cook it first to do this step. wondering what about thawed frozen corn, maybe thats already been cooked, would that work? anyway this all seems a little goofy still. maybe for another brew. anyway for this i will use a can of instant corn grits. (not convinced this will add any flavor, so really does it even make any sense to use this as opposed to corn sugar? if we're gonna do corn sugar might as well do cane sugar? i guess lets just go with the corn grits since we havent done it before)

it sounds like quick grits we can just drop into the mash without doing a cereal mash beforehand (this is what i did previously with instant rice). (ref: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/quick-grits-confused.431229/)

gravity / abv :
id like this to come to 4.5% but not sure how much the grits will convert so im setting it to 5%abv to give a little slack in case the efficiency is bad.

water :
build from distilled. minor calcium chloride addition. i tried fooling with BF light lager profile but it has this HCO/bicarbonate level that i am not sure with what i am supposed to add to increase the HCO levels to the target. anyway just go with the czech pilsner profile i have used in the past. i looked up some light lager water profiles and they are similar to this.

hops :
gonna use these old frozen wet hops hopefully theyre not bad.

yeast :
going back and forth between 34/70 and lutra. would like to try lutra but i do like the sulfur notes of 34/70 but maybe its not quite appropriate for this beer. also considering some maybe 2007 i do remember it was pretty clean tasting.