The U-boat Marzen Oktoberfest is coming along fine...


The starting gravity was at 1.040-1.042 it would have been higher but we spilled a bunch trying to get it from the boil kettle to the fermentors. One word of advise, never handle boiling wort, or try pouring it out of your brew kettle in your stocking feet.


The recipe for the U-boat Marzen Oktoberfest is as follows...


This is for a 10gal extract recipe



10 lbs. DME Light
2 lbs. DME Amber
2 lbs Munich Malt
1.5 lbs Vienna Malt
2 oz. Hallertauer Hops
1 oz. Tetnang Hops
2 tsp. Irish Moss


2 vials White labs German Marzen/Oktoberfest lager yeast #820 or one vial and a good starter

Place cracked grains in large grain bag, steep in 7.5 gal. of water at 155 degrees F. for 45 minutes. Remove bag and drain, do not squeeze grains. Add Dried Malt Extract to the water and raise temperature to boiling.

after 5 minutes of boiling add 1 oz. of the Hallertauer Hops, set the timer for 40 mintes.

After the 40 minutes add the Irish Moss, Set the timer for 15 minutes. After 3 minutes have passed add the other ounce of Hallertauer Hops. When there is 5 minutes left on the timer add the Tetnang Hops, let boil for 2 more minutes, and turn off the heat. Pour into Ice filled 5 gal primary fermentors I used 1ea. 16lb bag per fermentor you could also use 2ea. 8 pound bags. Try to put in equal amounts of hot wort into each fermentor. This should bring the temp down to Yeast pitching temps and should be just over the 5 gal mark. Then I let the wort settle for 20 minutes, and racked each 5 gal batch into another clean and sanitized 5 gal fermentor. I did this to leave any leftover trub, hops and gook behind so the beer wont be sitting on this for the 3 weeks of primary fermenting. You can choose to omit that step if you have a good straining system when you pour the hot wort into the 5 gal primaries. You may also have your own system for getting the wort cool, my advise is get the wort as cool as you can as fast as you can. So the final hops aroma won't get diffused by the wort continuing to cook.

Once you have the wort in the primary and the temp down to pitching temps go ahead and pitch the yeast. I used one vial of yeast put into a one gal. starter 4 nights before I was going to brew. This gave me the time to build up enough yeast to pitch for the 10 gallons, I was going to make and gave me the opportunity to make another starter, and put some yeast away for another brew session. To make the started I used 1 pound of DME light added to 4 cups of water. I boiled this for 15 minutes, and then put into a sink full of ice cubes and cool water. I put the lid on the pot during the cooling to prevent contamination.

Once it was cool enough I added the vial of white labs 820 Oktoberfest/Marzen lager yeast, poured it into a 1 gallon carboy, afixed the Air-lock, and let it sit on the counter at room temp for the 3 days and 4 nights. The starter made it to krausen and then started to fall off by the time I was ready to pitch into the U-boat Oktoberfest Saturday morning.

So back to the U-boat, I decanted most of the wort from the started, and swirled up the yeast to get it into suspension, I poured about half a cup into my other starter ,then poured half of the rest into one 5 gal. fermentor and the other half into the other 5 gal. fermentor. I left them out in the garage over night where the temps were in the 60's. Fermentation had started by the morning so I put the 2 fermentors into my lagering fridge and set the temp. to 55 degrees. I also put in the starter in the fridge because it will be a while before I will make the next lager beer batch. And I want to keep the starter in the fridge as long as possible.

More on the progress of the U-boat as it progresses later.