Vienna Lager Revvy's Vienna Lager

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Brewed this today. Used southern germany lager yeast (WL838 ). Probably my smoothest brew day to date. Will post results in 60 days.
 
Great recipe. Brewed this around the first of November and after 60+ days of lagering, it,s great. The only change I made from the original was to drop the mash temp to 151f. Very smooth and well balanced. Will definitely brew again. Great job Revvy!!!
 
Also, to make a note again. This is an excellent bottle brew. Some bottles, like hefes require a glass for consumption. This is one of those brews you drink right from the bottle after a day or yardwork, etc
 
While I've been gathering parts for my keezer, I've started designing little graphics for my tap handles. I've designed just a simple little handle idea with a lamnated graphic for each beer. I'm fiddling with a way just to slip the little laminated graphics into the handles so I can easily change them. But I've made a little Icon that is 2.25" wide x 3" long.

Right now I'm doing the ones for the beers that are going to be regular house beers. This one is obviously one of them.

Here's the one for this beer.

294982_10150870551684067_432181648_n.jpg
 
Hello,
I picked sixes up of negra modelo and amber dos equis recently and really like that style of beer.
Dos equis seems to have a bit more balanced taste with some adjunts added maybe?
Modelo might have more crystal malts added to it and it is a bit darker.

Anyway - can anyone tell me how close in taste this recipe is to either of those mexican beers?

Thanks Kevin
 
haeffnkr said:
Hello,
I picked sixes up of negra modelo and amber dos equis recently and really like that style of beer.
Dos equis seems to have a bit more balanced taste with some adjunts added maybe?
Modelo might have more crystal malts added to it and it is a bit darker.

Anyway - can anyone tell me how close in taste this recipe is to either of those mexican beers?

Thanks Kevin
Click to expand...

I haven't tasted either of them in years. But I would say this is probably closest to Negra Modelo, but with a bit more flavor.
 
Thanks for the great recipe Revvy!

I brewed this back in April, with minor modifications. My LHBS only had caramunich I, which is 39L rather than the 56L caramunich listed in your recipe. I also decided to substitute a bit of munich dark (9L) for some of the vienna malt, to add another level of flavor complexity; it ended up being about 9-10% of the recipe, so mine was about 75% vienna malt.

Overall this is a very nice, drinkable beer that's quite interesting on the palate. I do find it rather heavy compared to most mexican-style vienna lagers on the market, so please don't expect it to be light and easy-drinking like Dos Equis Amber (which I really like too). It's a good fall beer....a bit too heavy for the hot North Carolina summer we're having this year!

If I make this again I think I'll decrease the amount of caramel malt and see how that changes the result. The caramunich of ~10.5% plus crystal 60L of ~5.25% is quite a bit of caramel malt for me....I think it adds a bit too much body and some cloying syrupy sort of notes, at least with the 152-4 mash temp I used. These have mellowed some with 6-8 weeks of lagering, but it's still a bit much for me. Still, it's a great beer!

I'll probably enjoy this beer much more when October comes around, which is kinda the point of a Vienna lager/Oktoberfest style of beer I guess! Most likely I'll keep much of it lagering in the garage fridge/kegerator for the next few months.

Haeffnkr, if you want to make something more like Dos Equis amber I'd aim to decrease the SRM and alcohol by cutting down the caramel malt amount and decreasing the mash temp a bit. A 4% or so ABV beer made with mostly vienna and with a touch of crystal for color/body is likely closer to what you're looking for.
 
I'm thinking of brewing this soon, question about the hops: How does the aroma profile come out since you are only adding them at the start of the boil? I am an IPA fan, so while I do enjoy a nice lager I prefer it to have a little hop character showing. Would adding another 16gm (0.5oz) at flameout give me the tweak I'm looking for?
 
Duffman870727 said:
I'm thinking of brewing this soon, question about the hops: How does the aroma profile come out since you are only adding them at the start of the boil? I am an IPA fan, so while I do enjoy a nice lager I prefer it to have a little hop character showing. Would adding another 16gm (0.5oz) at flameout give me the tweak I'm looking for?
Click to expand...

Then it won't be THIS beer. Most lagers have little if any hop character . This especially is a malt driven lager. There's not SUPPOSED to be any hop flavor or aroma. This isn't a black iPa. It's a specific style of beer, and its brewed true to style.

I can't really speak on extra hops in this recipe since there's not supposed to be any for this style of beer. Some beer styles, and some beer recipes can be played with, my Belgian Blonde for example, some folks use it as a base beer with fruit. Or may change the yeast or hops. That's fine, I think with Belgian Blondes there's some space for exrpession.

But I don't think this one is like this. Viennas are sort of a lost style, there's very few commercial examples out there, and there's very few folks who brew this style. This recipe was create by me through the research cited above. If you're looking to brew a true Vienna lager, then this, I think is, the recipe to brew...As is. Except for perhaps changing to another lager yeast which might lend a different character, but still stay within the style.

But to add different hop additions, because you like hoppier beer, i can't really help you with, because this is not supposed to be a hoppier beer. You might want to look at a cascadian dark ale, if you want something like that.

If you did want to experiment with this, I would day, brew this AS IS the first time.....Then perhaps play with it. But you might find, that this recipe is pretty damn good just as it is.

Have you ever actually had a vienna lager? Why don't you try some commercial examples before you decide to change this one....Not every beer you brew has to be the same, does it?
 
I put together a PM version of this. It's my first lager, and the yeast choice is driven because I am going to do some bocks, so this was something of a "giant starter" for those.

My recipe was:

5 lb vienna malt
1 lb caramunich
0.5 lb crystal 60L
mashed at 154°F then sparged to yield about a 3.5 gallon starting boil

24 IBU worth of german spalt select at 60 min.

3.5 lb light DME 15 minutes before the end of the boil

[*]

Topped up to about 5.75 gallons (including probably half a gallon of trub and hops debris) and fermented with a decanted 3L WLP833 German Bock Yeast starter, using two vials. This hit the OG right on the nose, but you will probably need to tweak numbers based on your process efficiency a little bit. These numbers work for about 60% efficiency.

I used spalt select because I have it lying around. By no means do I suggest that this is a good idea, but it's what I did. As I said, I've not done any lagers before. This one is nearing the end of primary and will go to lager this weekend. The sample today, at about 1.012 SG, was very encouraging flavor-wise.

[*] I am a bit frightened to admit this, but in a gametime decision, I added another ounce of spalt select at 10 minutes. Obviously, for the reasons Revvy expressed above, that blows the style on this one. In this case, I opted to in order to get a better feel for the character of this variety of hops. If you're aiming to do a PM version of this, definitely stick to the original hops schedule. From what I've tasted so far, I will definitely be doing this recipe again, and I think next time I will stick to Revvy's hops recipe.
 
Sounds good Zeg let me know how it turns out. I can't wait to hear when you do it with my original hops. You might have come up with the pm version of this beer. :mug:
 
What a coincidence, just today I decided I would try my first lager, then was hoping someone on this thread would post a PM.

Going to give zeg's recipe a shot with Hallertauer hops. I'll try to report back in a few months.
 
revvy, your recipe looks nice. I usually don't like to alter lager recipes but I have all the ingredients for this vienna except the haller, what do you think of subing in tettnanger? I have 3/4 pound of this and since its a good german hop being utilized at 60 min as a bittering addition thought it would work. your thoughts.
 
sonex said:
revvy, your recipe looks nice. I usually don't like to alter lager recipes but I have all the ingredients for this vienna except the haller, what do you think of subing in tettnanger? I have 3/4 pound of this and since its a good german hop being utilized at 60 min as a bittering addition thought it would work. your thoughts.
Click to expand...

It should work fine. It's a noble hop. And it's only enough hopping on beers like this to bitter. Not necessarily to flavor it too much. Let us know how it turns out.
 
Revvy said:
It should work fine. It's a noble hop. And it's only enough hopping on beers like this to bitter. Not necessarily to flavor it too much. Let us know how it turns out.
Click to expand...

good you agree, I sure will report back.
 
So I had to search around and really the only commercial vienna available to me is from king brewery. I tried it and liked it so I brewed a 3 Gal batch of your recipe as is. I didn't realize style would be so limiting to experimentation, need to educate myself some more I guess. Im just about a week into primary with this, darker than I anticipated, what do you think? My first lager brew so im looking forward to opening the first bottle!

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Had a great time brewing this on my front porch. Had to do it because of rain. As it turns out the porch is a great place to brew!

Thanks for the recipe Revvy! I scaled it to 23L and used 50g of Saaz as I was short on the hallertau.

SG was higher than expected: 1060.

Made a 2l starter with wyeast Munich lager.

image-2317268363.jpg
 
Thanks for the recipe Revvy. Just finished my batch. 5.5 gallons, 1.049 og. I added 1 oz of hallertauer at 60 mins and realized I was going to be under for ibu's. Added .25 oz hersbrucker at 30 mins. I know that it's a little out of style, but it gave me 20.3 ibu's.
I have a nice 50 degree spot upstairs in my bungalow. Perfect for a late Michigan fall.
Any thoughts?
 
My thoughts are you did the right thing by adding some more hops.

I brewed this last night as well and since my 1 oz of hallertauer was only 3.8% AA, I added 0.5 of tettnang (probably not the best substitute but it's the closest I had) to get me above 20 IBUs. Decided to only use 0.5 lbs of Caramunich and made up the difference with more Vienna malt. OG was 1.050. Got temp down to 58-60 degrees, then pitched re-hydrated S-23 (first time using it) after giving a blast of O2, I put in garage where it currently reads 50 degrees this morning. Been a little over 12 hours, and I already see bubbling.

Mashed at 152 instead of 154, since lately I've been having trouble getting my FGs down low enough. (I wonder if my thermometer is out of wack). The smell of Vienna mashing was definitely unique since I'm used to brewing ales mostly with some sort of 2-row base malt.

Looking forward to this one.
 
After 5 days my hydrometer reads around 1.022. Initially I was a little worried that it was fermenting too fast, but then I realized that I used a yeast starter, so there's a lot of yeast in their doing there thing, even if it is at a cooler temperature. Does this seem correct? There was some time where I'm sure it got too warm, but it's been pretty cool for the most part.

The hydro sample smelled awesome, and I'm super excited about this one!
 
That picture isn't too different from how mine looked. A flash can make it look more opaque than it really is, also.

I just bottled my PM version and it's tasting pretty good. To save anyone having to dig through the thread, this was made using 5 oz (!) of Spalt Select (1.3 %AA) and another 1oz of it thrown in for the last 10 minutes. Fermented with WLP833. I think I only gave it 3 weeks in primary, with a probably unnecessary D-rest and then a month of lagering at 32-34°F. OG was 1.051, FG was 1.012.

It's my first lager, but zomg is that crystal clear. It's like looking through a caramel-colored window pane. It has a nice maltiness and some nuttiness which I presume is from the vienna. It does have some spicy hoppage that's probably out of style, but I have to say I don't regret throwing that in. I was a bit worried that there'd be some grassiness from using 6 oz of hops in a lager, but I don't detect any. The only flaw I see right now is a dull but fairly strong bitterness late in the aftertaste. A minute after a sip, it's still with you. In an ale, I wouldn't think twice about this because it tastes like something that would age out quickly. I'm not sure what to expect in a lager, though, since I'd think it'll evolve somewhat less in bottles. But we'll find out!
 
I'm now 'lagering' which means I covered my fermenter with a big plastic bag, then put it in a cooler thingy, and put the whole thing outside. I'm getting air temp highs and lows of around 40F and 28F, so I'm assuming with some insulation to smooth things out, it won't turn out too bad.

My primary was 10 days I think, the gravity was getting low (1.016), so I did a 40 hour rest at room temp, then put it outside. I read that the rest should be done before it's too attenuated, so that's why my primary was shorter than others. When I did the rest, I didn't detect any diacetyl, only large amounts of deliciousness. I'm curious what this will taste like in time, perhaps it will give me an idea of what diacetyl tastes like, or perhaps I just didn't have any.
 
Tried the first one this evening after 3 weeks carbonating and 3 days in the fridge to settle. It's pretty good, but I think it's still a bit green. It has a bit of a bitter bite to it. The hop flavor from my 10 minute addition is ok, but I think a bit much. It helped to let it warm a bit, which accentuated the maltiness, giving a better balance. I think a bit more time in the bottles will help balance the flavors and improve the carbonation a bit. It was pleasantly effervescent, but the head was small and short-lived.
 
What would you think of using ale yeast instead of lager yeast? I know it wouldn't have the same clean crisp taste, but I was just kicking the idea around. Cheers!
 
I've done it with a clean ale yeast, fermented cool. It wasn't the same beer, but it was close. And tasty. Try something like Pacman and ferment as cool as you can. Or a Cali Ale yeast.
 
This is probably the most drinkable beer I've made. It's super smooth and has a nice malty taste to it.

I'm entering this in a competition to be judged in a couple weeks. I'll try to post how it did.

Excellent recipe
 
Revvy said:
Awesome!!!! Good Luck! :mug:
Click to expand...

Don't have scoresheets yet, but it scored a 32, and my other beer (Christmas Ale) scored 41.

I wish this one would have scored higher than the other one, since I'm a huge fan of it, but at least when I get score sheets back I'll know how I can improve on it.

Breaking it down:
First year brewing
Partial mash
First lager
Weak boil
Ice bath cooled
No hot or cold break
Completely hacked temp regulation and lagering

This is the second beer I'll be making a second batch of.
 
So this was my first lager, has been in bottles for 2 months now. I'm happy with how it turned out :) Nice clear beer, smooth malty flavour and aroma, crisp finish. Carbonation is a little low, I did not add more yeast when bottled. Revvy, how is the head retention on this brew for you? I know I don't have much carbonation but any head I get when first poured or subsequently swirled goes down very fast. I'd brew this again and would like better head on it, though I am looking into kegging now for lager brewing to get around the issues of properly bottle conditioning a lager. Thx for the recipe man!

DSC_0677.jpg
 
Mine had very minimal head with poor retention too.

(I don't mind, as it's a delicious beer that has only gotten better with age)
 
My PM version has a pretty good head. The retention is fair, as good as any I've made (which is not terribly good, I suppose, but it's not far shorter than commercial beers).
 
REVVY!!!

I was thinking a mini-mash.

3.3# BRIESS CBW MUNICH
4# Weyermann ® Vienna
1# Caramunich Malt
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L

Following the rest of your recipe from there.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Martin
 
I did a partial mash version (recipe is somewhere upthread) that was similar to that. I used 3.5 pounds of light DME and 5 pounds of Vienna, otherwise the same. That got me to 1.051 OG. My efficiency is low---probably 50% on that one---so that may or may not be useful information, depending on your system.

The recipe worked well, at least malt-wise. I got a little crazy and added some hops late in the boil and overdid it. It's still good, but it would have been better without that.
 
I just rocked this recipe off yesterday. Awesome efficiency coming in at 80%. Using White labs Belgian lager, hoping it turns out great!
 

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