This one is based on the "Limp Richard's" schwarzbier recipe in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing and it's my first shot at a lager.
Ingredients:
- 7lb Briess dark LME
- 1/2lb german caraffe
- 1/2lb crystal 60L
- 1oz Sterling hops @ 60 min
- 1/2oz Sterling hops @ 45 min
- 1/2 Vanguard hops @ 30 min
- 1/2 Vanguard @ 15 min
- tablet of whirlfloc @ 15 min
- whitelabs wlp830 German Lager yeast - in 1 ltr starter
- 1/2 cup tupelo honey @ racking.
- 3/4 cup dextrose for priming
I started the yeast by creating a 1L starter w/ extra-light DME about 24 hr earlier and pitched at 72F. I left the wort at 70F overnight in my 5gal betterbrew carboy with a hood/blow-off tube. The next morning it was going nuts. At that point I moved the carboy to my ice-cube lager box and brought the temp down to 50F. I left the blow-off tube in place for 3 days (until blow-off had ceased) and then replace with a #10 stopper and fermentation lock. For the first 3 weeks I kept the temperature between 48 - 55F.
After three weeks I racked to a secondary fermenter and added boiled then cooled mixture of 1/2cup of tupelo honey and 1cup water. Then back in the lager box for 3 days @ 50-55F. Then I dropped the temp down to 40-45F and will try to maintain it there until lagering is done (update: see-below).
My big complaint here is that this lager will take 6 weeks to complete, but that's how lagers work. Ales are much easier and quicker, so I hope this beer is good enough to warrant all this work and attention.
The OG was 1.048 and gravity at racking was 1.022 (before adding the honey).
Update
After 6 weeks in the lager box at between 50-55F I bottled this. The last 5 days or so my digital thermometer got out of whack and was reporting temps ~10F higher than they should have been. This resulted in dropping the temp lower into the low 40s, upper 30sF- I think this caused much of the yeast to drop out before bottling. Thanks to this it took several weeks for this beer to successfully carbonate. However, it eventually became very nicely carbonated- now it pours a large brown head with good retention.
This beer isn't a very true representation of the schwarzbier style, but it's a very tasty beer. It's like a clean drinking porter.
Update 2
This recipe won two awards at the '09 First Coast Cup competition- gold in category as a schwarzbier and bronze in category as a robust porter.
