Report on U-boat Marzen Oktoberfest:

Hello gang, just a quick report on the U-boat Oktoberfest 10 gal batch. The beer has been fermenting nicely at the frigged temperature of 45 degrees for the past 3 weeks. I decided to pull the beer from the fridge to do a diacetyl rest. After 24 hours I took a Specific Gravity reading on Sunday, and it was at 1.020 about half way from the starting gravity. I think I will let it go another week or two to see if we can get the gravity down near 1.007-1.013. After taking the reading I decided to do a taste test, and WOW let me tell you it was very much like a light German Lager if there ever was one. Still a bit sweet but it still has some fermenting to do! There is a light hint of hop aroma and some bitterness, but that should age out once it has been in the bottles a while.

After we get near the target ending gravity, I will rack to carboys, and begin the long temperature lowering Lagering phase till we get to 33 degrees F. in about a month, then we will bottle.

I am debating on bottling with priming sugar or creating a Kräusen to add to the brew to do bottle conditioning. If I decide to do a Kräusen then I will make a stronger batch of Oktoberfest at 11.5 gallons because I will use approx 1.5 gal to add to the current batch of beer. This way I will have the second batch hopefully at the target OG of 1.056-1.060, and will have a batch in bottles as another batch is fermenting. I don’t expect the current batch to last long after tasting it last night.

Well until next week, peace and Happy brewing!

Kettle Maintenance

Hey sisters, just a quick update on the kettle maintenance performed on Saturday. I purchased a stainless steel ball valve, and take-up screen (Bazooka screen) to filter whole hops from the wort as we transferred the wort to the waiting fermentors.

Once the parts arrived I realized I did need a short length of copper tubing, and a threaded fitting so the screen could be attached on the inside of the kettle to the new ball valve. So a trip out to Home Depot began. Once there I found the food-grade solder I needed, a length of copper tubing 5’ of it, I wish I could have just bought a 1 foot length. And I found the threaded fitting to fit the copper tubing.

After digging around in the shop I realized I could not find my torch to weld the copper tubing to the threaded fitting so another run out to the hardware store, and I bought another welding kit with another gas cylinder. Oh well you can never have enough gas right? (Sorry ladies)

I measured the inside of the kettle, and cut the appropriate length of tubing, sanded the ends, and the insides of the Bazooka screen and the copper threaded fitting. Lit the torch and applied flux to the joints. A few minutes later the pieces were nicely welded/soldered together.

Now for the drilling part, to install the Bazooka screen and the ball valve to the kettle it required a 7/8” hole near the bottom of the keg. I marked a spot high enough to keep the screen out of the trub once it settles in the keg, and in between the two handles so it would not get in the way if carried. 10 gallons of wort gets very heavy! Try 80 pounds heavy! I started with a 3/16” drill and drilled a hole on the mark, then I switched to a Step Drill bit. This drill bit is shaped like a cone, and gets bigger and bigger at the base. So as you drill it will make the hole larger, the biggest part of the drill bit was 7/8” so basically I drilled until I was at the biggest point. I test fit the pieces together and they were perfect.

So a little clean up on the inside of the kettle (remove the metal shavings, and the oil used to lubricate the drill bits) and put the parts together. The pictures are of the final assembly of the brew kettle ball valve and Bazooka screen. This will make transferring the wort to the fermentors a snap! Not to mention without any mess, or heaven forbid, spilled wort/beer!

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.

The Bismark Hellas Starter Yeast

Well the starter yeast is going great, it has been sitting on the counter since yesterday evening, and last night and this morning it was bubbling like gang-busters. So we are well on our way to having a nice 1 gal Starter for the double batch of Bismark Hellas I will be making Saturday.

Because the Superbowl is on Sunday, I will have to brew this myself. but it is the least I can do for the club so we will have some more yummy lager in a couple months. :)

More after the brew session

Unsinking the Bismark Hellas

After hours of pouring over websites, and hints and tips from other
brewers nation/web-wide I have determined that the Bismark Hellas
probably sunk because of under-pitched yeast.

For a Lager to be "Great" it needs to start out its fermentation at
low temperatures which I attempted to do by pitching the yeast, and
getting the fermentors right into the fridge, and down to lagering
temps 45-55 degrees F. Starting the Lager at such low temeratures
will prevent unwanted esters from developing at all, leaving you with
a crisp dry lager beverage.

However the amount of yeast pitched needs to have quite a bit of
live/active yeast cells to begin fermentation right away. A single
vial of White Labs lager yeast only has about 100,000 yeast cells and
active viable cells in the neighborhood of 35-50,000 cells. Based on
what I have gleaned from other brewers and websites a 5 gal. batch of
lager needs approx 200,000 cells to begin a good fermentation at
lager temps.

The White labs vial actually say that the wort needs to remain at
room temperatures (70 degrees) until fermentation begins. Usually a
day or 2 on average. I in fact did not give the yeast this needed
warmth to begin it propagation, because I did not want and unwanted
esters to form, and did not give the yeast cells enough time to
divide and create a colony big enough to sustain good fermentation.
So by under pitching and putting the wort right into the lager fridge
the wort did not have a chance to get fermenting before the creepy
micro-organisms took over and probably killed the yeast.

So I am making a yeast starter based on tips from other brewers to
build up a large colony of yeast cells so I will have the number of
yeast cells needed to begin lagering right away. Basically I took 1lb
of DME plain light malt and added it to 1 gal of tap water. Cooked it
for about 15 minutes on the stove with the added DME at a boil and
then cooled it in a sink of cool water, till I could pitch the vial
of Marzen/Oktoberfest Munich Lager yeast. I put on an air-lock and it
is resting on the kitchen counter at room temp. This morning I
noticed very slow fermentation so I can guess that the yeast is
currently propagating the colony and dividing and making more yeast
cells.

I hope to have a nice big colony of lager yeast by Saturday when I
will try to recreate the batch that sunk last time, a double batch of
Bismark Hellas. I will also be adding more of the EXTRA-LIGHT DME as
the last batch never reached the target beginning SG of 1.040 and I
had to pitch in a pound of dextrose to reach the SG last time.

So this time I am going to buy an additional 2 lbs of Extra-light DME
and pitch that in with the rest of the ingredients. I will also try
to add Munich Malt to the grain bill if the brew store has some.

Check back next week to see what the Brewmaster comes up with and see
if the Bismark will again take to the brewing seas...

The Bismark sunk :(

As is typical with boats, they do occasionaly sink, and unfortunatly
the double batch of Bismark sunk and went sour.

what happend? not sure, we got the wort down to room tempurature, we
pitched the yeast, and I put it in the lager(fridge) The primary
fermentors bubbled a little and then nothing. Stuck fermentation? not
sure. I think next time I will create a yeast starter for the lagers,
and then pitch. In the past I have pitched the yeast and let it stay
out at room tempurature for a day or so until the fermentation was
going well, then into the lager fridge. I was hoping I could reduce
any dycylic esters by moving to lager temps as quick as possible. But
the White Labs yeast probably isn't enough yeast cells to get
fermentation going strong enough unless a starter is used?

I am going to do some research on this and hopefully find the answer.

Welcome fellow Beer brewers,

This blog will be were we discribe our brewing sessions. Join us as we try out new and exciting recipes, and share our experiences with you.

I found some nice extract recipes on Homebrew.com. Go to their web site, and check out these extract kits. They have the ingredients already packaged for these recipes. So Find a recipe you like, add it to your cart, and they will send you all you need to make that recipe!

Bismark Munich Hellas Extract

Bavarian Haus Bock Extract

Bier Haus Eisbock Extract

Blitzkreig Dortmunder Extract

Crimson Oktoberfest Extract

Eine Kleine Vienna Rocks Lager Extract

Ludwigs German Pilsner Extract

O'Mathis Irish Lager Extract

Sedylmayr Munich Dunkel Extract

Tea Party Lager Extract

Volstead Pre Pro Lager

Walk-About Australian Lager Extract

What in the Hellas Bock Extract