Traditional Bock - AG#09

Evening all,

Yesterday I brewed a Traditional Bock from Greg Hughes' book.

For my set up the grain bill in the recipe looked a bit short, when I plugged it into BeerSmith, so I upped the two pale malts by 250g, which had the added bonus of using it all up, so that I didn't have little packets of unused grain sitting about.

3kg Pale Malt - Golden Promise
3kg Munich Malt (15ebc)
550g Special B Malt
350g Carapils Malt

24g Northern Brewer at 75 mins
15g Tettnang at 30 mins.

22 and a bit litres into FV and pitched one sachet of WLP833 German Bock yeast.

All went to plan around feeding, bathing and tobedding the kids, with nothing major to report.

OG 1052, which is a bit on the low side, however I lose 1.5l plus to the boiler due to the height of the tap and the length of the adapter for the bazooka hop filter. I therefore topped up the FV a bit more to compensate.

Went out for a couple or five with the Tamworth HBC gents on Sat, too, which was a right giggle, and we discussed (amongst very many other things) a false bottom, a braided(?) hose under that right to the bottom of the boiler, and a pump, to get the most out of it. All in all 30 quid will save me about 75p per brew in wasted ingredients. Plus give me more delicious ale which would otherwise cost me a lot more from the offy.

I'm also considering getting geared up for 50l brews.... Stainless, gas, pumps, bigger fermenting fridges, kegerator. Oh, dear. The Brewbug has got its teeth well and truly embedded...

So, 48 hours later and it is fermenting nicely, so I've turned the fridge down to 15c for the rest of primary.

The WLP833 German Bock yeast is a proper stinker, and given that 2 brews ago I had a very similar smell from an infection, which ended up,down the sink, I was a bit concerned. This is my first time using a lager yeast, though, and a good rummage round the forums has shown me that this is normal, and that lager yeasts generally are very sulphurous in their odour.

Other differences from the one that went off are that the yeast was pitched from a proper sachet which had been unopened, and which was therefore pure. It was also pitched at the right rate for the volume of wort. Finally, the fermentation started straight away and is vigorous. The spoiled one took a while to get going and only had a Krausen after 2 weeks.

Fingers crossed, and more on progress later, as it happens. Exciting stuff, eh?

Dog.

Traditional bock should actually have an OG of 1.066, to deserve the name of bock.

I hope this one goes well for you. An eisbock has been on my to-do list for a while now, that's the freeze concentrated version.

I don't think I've tried a bock before. I guess with all that special B it is going to be quite a sweet finish.

That OG seems pretty low for the grain bill. How do you mash and sparge?

chthon said:

Traditional bock should actually have an OG of 1.066, to deserve the name of bock.

Click to expand...

You're absolutely right. I'd ordered the malt as per the recipe in Greg Hughes book before I put it into Brewsmith to work out timings, hop quantities etc., and only did that the morning of the day I was brewing. At that point I noticed that the grain bill appeared short. I actually increased the pale malt over the book recipe by half a kilo. I also topped up the FV a bit more than I needed to, as I would rather have a bit more beer than an exact Bock. My set up loses nearly 2l after the boil, due to the height of the tap on the boiler, which then requires over-diluting to get to the recipe volume in the FV, which weakens the beer, too.

So, aside from the dilution thing, either the book is short on malt to hit the required OG, or my set up is not as efficient as I had thought. Or a combo of the two. My suspicion is the former, as all my previous brews have been on the money with the numbers, however I could be wrong.

As it is not going to go into a competition, however and is just going to go into our mouths, I'm not overly bothered. I'd still like to know from an academic viewpoint, though.

So, two weeks in and a bit, and this evening I transferred to secondary and into the fermenting fridge at 3°c to lager for 4 weeks. FG was down to 1010.

Tasted the sample and it was gorgeous. It was indeed sweet, and malty, and barely bitter, which is what I expected. There's a lovely aromatic undertone which I recognise but cannot place, too. I think this may come from the yeast, but not sure.

I'd missed the earlier question about how I sparge, too, so to answer, I batch sparge with two x 6l of 75°c water, leave each for 15 mins before running it off.

I've done another brew since using just pale malt and 6kg again, and it came out way stronger at 1092in the FV before topping up with water. Ended up with 24l at OG1064 for that one. So not really sure what thd difference is. Suggestions welcome, but I fear there are a lot of possible variables and explanations.

It does taste pretty darn good though, which is fine by me considering it's only AG#9.

Dog.

So it's now been lagered for 4 weeks and bottled for 2 on the house, with 130g sugar in the bottling bucket to give some fizz.

I am disappointed with the amount of fizz though. It tastes great, but with more of an ale level of condition than a lager fizz, and very little head retention.

I'm not sure whether I need to give it longer in the bottle or whether I should write it off as a lagery style beer and simply enjoy it as an ale.

Also, I wonder whether I should've pitched some more yeast before bottling, to help conditioning, as it may be that any yeast left in the brew before bottling was either dead, or thre were just not enough of them to condition properly. It was very bright when bottled.

Any thoughts and tips for the next time I attempt something similar would be very welcome.

Dog.

Lagers take longer to carb don't they because of the lower quantities of yeast left in solution? I've never done one but sure that's what I've read. I'd give it another week or two.