Bavarian Helles 1.2

I loved this beer so much the first time that I decided I'd get another one in the pipeline. The first one left me wanting more. I made a few changes:

• Add some Munich malt. I chose Avangard Munich.
• I want to get it to attenuate more, since my last one stuck at 1.020. I'll let it ferment for 3 weeks and pitch more yeast.
• I want to use distilled water to see what difference building the water profile from scratch would make.
• Add a protein rest to the mash. I'm going to make this a habit for German beers that I'd do a decoction mash for if I wanted to do a decoction mash.

This is also the first time I'll get to use my new pH meter after having read Water from Brewers Publications.

My profile ended up looking like this:

Calcium: 58
Magnesium: 0
Alkalinity as CaCO3: 10
Sodium: 5
Chloride: 102
Sulfate: 0
Effective Hardness as CaCO3: 41
RA: -31

Water treatment: 12g Calcium Chloride, 1g baking soda (to bump up the sodium slightly)

I hit a 5.4 pH. Not bad for my first crack at using the meter.

It was still going up. It settled at 5.4. The temperature reads 81 degrees, but I ended up cooling it to room temp and getting the same reading of 5.4. I intend to do room temperature readings.

I chose a double infusion mash to keep the brew time down. I added all of the brewing salts and mashed in at 130 for 30 minutes, 150 for 40 minutes, then raised the temp to 168 and sparged.

Transferred 13.5 gallons to the boil kettle over 30 minutes.

Preboil OG: 1.049. Way high for where I wanted this to be. I added another gallon or more from what was sitting in the bottom of the mash tun. If I had an extra gallon of distilled water I would have added that as well.

Boiled hard for 90 minutes. Added 4oz of Hallertauer Hersbrucker at 75 minutes. Pitched rehydrated Irish Moss and 1 tsp of yeast nutrient at 10 minutes.

I chilled to 40 degrees, gave the wort 150 seconds of pure O2, then pitched a 3L starter of WLP 820 salvaged from my last batch into ~11 gallons of 1.060 wort. I'll be brewing a doppelbock in three weeks and I will use this yeast cake directly.

It's a breeze doing lagers in the winter time. I don't even need to pick up ice, just have the snow shovel handy. Once my well water gets the wort down to about 80 degrees (takes maybe 15 minutes), I will switch over to my keg cleaner bucket, which has a little suction pump attached. I simply recirculate this ice cold water through my wort chiller. From the 80 degrees, it takes another 15 or so to get down to pitching temps.

The brew couldn't have gone smoother, save for the higher than anticipated OG. I should have lowered the malt bill - my logic that I'd collect an extra gallon didn't pan out - or had some extra distilled water to top it up in the middle of the boil. I really need to dial in these calculations.

Recipe later.