This is a modification of the Altbier recipe in Papazian's "Complete Joy of Homebrewing". When I made it I had no way to perform the lagering phase during a secondary fermentation. So this one was done with a straight up primary fermentation of seven days and then bottled. It turned out pretty good. It's a good session beer that exhibits a mild bitterness up front with a pleasant malty finish thanks to the dark malts in the recipe.
My interest in this beer was sparked by my visit to Dusseldorf's altstadt- the home of the altbier. This recipe didn't quite do the style justice, but for an easy partial mash recipe and no lager time I was pleased.
Ingredients:
- 2 cans Briess Pilsen Light LME
- 1 lb Cara Red malt
- .25 lb chocolate malt
- .5 lb German black caraffe malt
- 1.7 oz Northern Brewer hops @ 60 minutes
- 1 packet Safebrew S-33 yeast
- 1 tablet whirlfloc @ 15 mintues
- .75 cups dextrose for priming
First I performed a mash with the malt in 2 gallons of water- 15 minutes @ 130 F followed by 45 minutes @ 150 F. Then sparged with 1/2 gallon of 170 F water. Then added the 2 cans of extract while bringing the wort to a boil. Once the boil commenced all hops are added and boiled for the full 60 minutes. With 15 minutes left in the boil I added the whirlfloc.
I then added the wort to my 6 gallon carboy along with 3 gallong of nearly frozen water, then put the carboy in an ice bath. I pitched the yeast directly from the packet @ 84 F.
Initial gravity was 1.043
After 7 days in the fermenter I bottled with a final gravity of 1.019.
It's worth noting that the S-33 yeast went nuts and seems to have eatten its fill within the first 2 or maybe 3 days. Beyond those first couple days fermentation was very slow.
I would really like to try this recipe again and use the whitelabs Dusseldorf Alt yeast strain as well as add in a 2 week secondary fermentation at lower lagering temps.
