Maggie Helles - Monday, July 11, 2016

15 Gallons

This is my annual Helles for the big six in August. I need to make more of this style on a regular basis. It doesn't take much longer than a Kolsch, but needs to age longer. This won't be getting any aging since it will be served as soon as it clears.

22 lbs. Bohemian Pilsner

2 lbs. Toasted Wheat Flakes

56.5 grams Hallertauer - 5.5% AA at 60 min.

WLP833 German Bock - Pitch @ 60 F until signs of krausen then ramp down to 50 F to 53 F.

75/25 RO/WELL ( 25% well water doesn't seem to hurt it )

1 1/2 tsp. yeast nutrient @ 10 min.

Whirlfloc tablet @ 10 min.

O.G. - 1.056 - 89% - WHY?

F.G. -  1.014

% -      5.3

SRM - 3

BU - 17.7

Pitched @ 58 F next morning at 7:30 am.

The toasted wheat flakes aren't giving these last couple of brews any toasted wheat flavor. So I guess it is just helping head retention. 2 lbs. seems good enough as I don't want to plug up my hopstopper as I did a few weeks ago. The wort was clear but I had to get half in the conical before it did clear up. I didn't wait long enough after I whirlpooled to get it into my conical. Too hot out and too long to cool. It only got down to 70 F, and took until the next day to get there. Active fermentation before I went to bed, but left it overnight. I turned it down to 13 C the next morning. I will wait until later in the day to turn it down to 10 C or so. It took all day to get down to 52 F. I opened the fridge door and got a big in your face smell of rotten eggs. Whew!!! Very active bubbler. I hope it is still going by Sunday as I would like to do a d-rest. Not very active on Sunday, but turned the fridge off for a d-rest of some sort. Will stop the ramp up @ 65 F. I will keg this a little bit early if my Kolsch sucks, and at the moment, it sucks.

                                                         * UPDATE *

I have that dreaded "Pernament Starch Haze" again. I am trying to clear it with gelatin and polyclar. It didn't work 3 years ago, but I am going to give a go again. I have no choice as I hate light beers that look like pea soup. I bought a vino min jet beer filter off of Ebay, but it may not get here for Aug 5/6/7. I hope this thing works though as I want to filter my beers and cpbf them as I don't have a lot of keg space. 2 batches of beer and that is all the room I have to store beer. Not sure how long they will keep in bottles though as I am filtering the yeast out. I will find out though. This has quite a nice Pilsner taste to it. Only the second time it has happened, ( November 2014 ). Too bad it has starch haze, but it may clear up. I added polyclar to a 250 ml mason jar and it has indeed cleared. I will give this a week to clear and go from there. I did add polyclar to my 3/4 filled Helles along with some gelatin. It was white going in the keg. You never know if you don't try. I think the Kolsch is clearing well so at least we will have something good to drink. I am just going to brew lagers for now on at least in the conical. When winter comes I haven't decided what to brew on the bench with my carboys. I may brew with Wyeast 1007 as it is a clean yeast and I can brew it in the low 60's.

                                                                         *UPDATE*

I bought a used mini jet wine filter and filtered one keg that was around 2/3 full. A lot of foam and I still lost a litre of beer even though the keg wasn't full. It did clear it up though. I used #1 course filter and it was clear. I didn't get any cardboard flavor like I did the last time I used my old plate filter. This was a last ditch effort to have clear beer, but I won't be filtering beer in the future unless I have to. My Kolsch had the same recipe and it cleared fine. Go figure. I still have one keg left so I need to sanitize 2 or maybe 3 kegs to deal with all of the foam. Then, let it sit overnight in the keezer and then transfer to one final keg. A lot of shit to deal with, but I will end up with clear beer at the end of it all and that is all that matters. This beer tastes real good. It has a deep Pilsner malt taste which I have only gotten 2-3 times in all of the lagers I have made. I can easily make more beer like this all winter. It did clear with gelatin and it took 30 days to do it. That is nuts. Beer tastes real good now. Not as clean as it should be, but that is because I pitched the yeast @ 68 F. Next time, 50 F - 55 F.