German Octoberfest

CrealCritter

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Brewing up a German October Fest tomorrow, supposed to rain, so a good day for brewing. I figured I might as well, before it gets to warm in the basement to brew lager.

Mini mash ingredients, lots of fermentables and flavors in this brewers best kit.
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CrealCritter

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My son in law helped me, first time brewing for him and he was full of questions. So I took my time, explained everything the best I could. Ended up taking a little over 3 hours start to finish. The most time consuming was the mini mash. You all know better than me that its hard to maintain a temperature range of 150 to 160 for 30 minutes. At 170 you burn the grains, and the grains can not touch the bottom of the kettle. I used a magnetic hook from the shop to suspend the bag in the water. It worked great.
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The at the end of 30 minutes I raised the bag and let it drip to get every drop of goodness out of those grains. It dripped for a good 30 minutes.
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The spent grains were deliciously sticky. My chickens love me long time for this special treat.
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Taking hydrometer reading. 1052 or around 7%ish potential alcohol content.
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Since this is a German beer, my daughter named it Wolfgang Van Wortenhauser -:)
 
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CrealCritter

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Wolfgang Van Wortenhauser our happy little German Octoberfest Lager is alive and krausening. I love it when a old processes comes together like this. Both thumbs up for authentic tried and true German brewing traditions.
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CrealCritter

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Day 1 - Wolfgang Van Wortenhauser our little Octoberfest, has started eating. See bubbles in the gallon bucket of sanitizer, via the blow off tube :). This is a very old German lager yeast strain, which is a bottom feeder. Ale yeasts are top feeders.

The wort looks so rich and tasty already.
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Thick layer of yeast on the bottom. Normally with ale yeast this would be inactive, dead yeast, proteins and other things unfermentable. But with lager yeast, the bottom is where the action occurs. The yeast cake is thick for just one day and it looks a lot like butter doesn't it? Brewing beer is so interesting...
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