Back in the saddle again...

So after an almost 5 month hiatus from brewing, we're back at it again this labor day weekend. The layoff was mostly due to a lot of other summer activities, but partly due to a "less than excellent" results with the milk stout we brewed last time.
We're getting a little more ambitious this time; in honor of the season we decided to brew an Oktoberfest lager, our first attempt at a lager. So without further verbosity, here's the events from yesterday.

After a visit to our favorite beer store, Listermann's on Saturday, we scheduled a pot luck dinner for the labor day weekend after our brewing was complete (got to keep the wives involved and happy)

It's about a 5 hour process from start to finish to brew using a kit, maybe a little longer depending on the cool down time required for the wort.



So first step, as always is to salute the start of the brewing with a toast (yeah, I know this is an old pic, we'll have to take a new one next time)


Now on to the brewing
First, we filled the grain sack



and brought the water up to steeping temperature (150 degrees) for 1/2 hour. You lift up the grain sack out of the water occasionally to steep it like tea.


Next, raised water to a boil and added the Pilsner extract and the hops

Not nearly enough hops for Jerry


We had no boil-overs this time, must have been the great temperature control work by Steve :-)

The cool-down took a long time for this batch; maybe it was a hotter day, but it took one hour to cool down to 100 degrees, and another hour after that for the wort to reach 80 degrees so we could cast the yeast.


The OG was 1.052, and the raw wort had an ice tea like flavor to it.

After the yeast had been cast, and it was all sealed up in the primary fermenter, it took a car ride to the lagering fridge, where it will sit for 14 days at a temperature between 50 and 60 degrees.

Sunday 12 noon temp: 48 degrees, so made a slight adjustment to the fridge temp control, will check back tomorrow