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11/15/2020
won gold medal malty european lagers category in 2020 JRHB Dominion Cup.
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8/27/20
brewed last night. mostly went well. started with 12.5 gallons wort as planned but it easily boiled down to about 10-10.5 gallons. could collect more wort next time or boil softer. first gravity reading was 1.070 and i was at about 8 or 8.5 gallons after trub filtered out. topped up with tap water. chilled overnight in ferm chamber and pitched in the morning.

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8/26/20
brew day. tried to mess with water calculations a little. not really sure what to use for festbier/oktoberfest. playing with balanced profile. ran into the HCO chalk issue again, not sure how to fix. looks like i could make it work with "light colored and malty" profile. going to need 16 or more gallons mash/sparge water, might just run it with tap.

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8/21/2020
i think i am going to go for it with this thing. today adding some acidulated malt based on henrico guess profile to hit pH, hopefully i will remember to take a reading.
todo :

• what to do about head retention?
  adding .75lb carafoam for foam and head retention
  * https://beerandbrewing.com/d-lite-festbier-recipe/
  
• how much yeast?
  according to yeast calculator (depending on the mfg date) i need 4 packs plus a 4L 1.050 starter, pound and half of DME decanting, etc.. yikes! yeast alone would be like $35.
  alternatively, i have a lot of 34/70 from two batches that i could use...
  brulosophy compared german bock lager yeast with 34/70 and eventually could barely tell difference :
  * http://brulosophy.com/2016/07/21/yeast-comparison-saflager-w-3470-vs-wlp833-german-bock-lager-exbeeriment-results/
  im learning that 34/70 is equiv to WY2124 and WLP830 some say the white labs come out different.
  i think i might just keg the two lagers i have in chamber and rack the 10gal batch on top of the cakes...? or maybe half cakes? after some reading, seems about right. some say only 1/4 cake. at end of fermentation slurry contains about 6x cells. that is 600 billion per 5 gal batch. i need 717 billion for 10 gallons, so 358 billion per 5 gal bucket, divided by 600 = 0.58 so i need 58% of each of the yeast cakes.
  
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  2/4/2020
  todo :
  
• consider some crystal malt - no head retention...possibly some light munich
  
  festbier flavors developed nicely however the beer was way too malty sweet probably because it was up over 7%abv. modifiying recipe down to 5.5% abv.
  
  breakdown on previous recipe formulation :
  
• i kind of customized a lot. the original aha recipe is only remotely close. but it was designed for 5.8%. i probably just aimed higher than i should have and came out even higher than planned.
  
• hop adjustments - reduced the hop contribution a little bit to land in the middle of the IBU range but also adjustments to bump up the BU/GU ratio (0.38 previously, currently its at 0.48)
  
• i got to 1.010 with 85% attenuation. for the updated recipe this attenuation results in 1.007. id considered doing some crystal malt, but lets just do a 30 minute mash and see what that does.
  
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  1/22/2020
  just went into cold crash after 9 days at diacetyl based off of beer & brewing article. other places im seeing say only 2 days is needed. would prob benefit for more time in cold crash (if time is of essence). not sure if it hurts to have it at rest temp for longer tho.
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  12/19/2019
  i think i am going to retry this to have ready feb 1. took a pound off the grain bill to lower the abv to more standard level.
  
  for fermentation and diacetyl rest strategy :
  we are going out of town in a couple days so if i get this brew done before i leave, i will probably just let it go for 6 or 8 days at 50 then slowly raise it up to 55 when i get back. keep it there for another 3 days then cold crash until feb.
  
  alternatively beer and brewing suggests something like this :
  
• 50deg for first 48 hours
  
• raise one degree each day for 10 days
  
• on day 11, allow temp to free rise to (warmest temp in brewery, but lets just say 70)
  
• 9 days later start the cold crash
  
  i was considering cold crashing for only a couple days then moving to keg. ive read other places tho that it can benefit from sitting on that yeast cake all that time. on the other hand it would be nice to get it into a closed safe clean keg....???idk
  
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  update 10/20/19
  this beer is way off. i thought it was too malty sweet but i think it is actually diacetyl (or possibly DMS but diacetyl would make more sense) - i pitched the wort on top of oktoberfest yeast cake that had been sitting (in a covered bucket in cold ferm chamber, but...) for several days, maybe even a week. also i went away in the middle of fermentation and wasnt able to ease it up to diacetyl rest temperature properly accordinig to the schedule written out below. need to retry this with 1) proper fermentation schedule 2) fresh or uncontaminated yeast 3) try the original recipe? i think with no malt changes on my system it will still come out at 6%
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  update 10/7/19
  ugh looks like this will accidentally come out at 8%. fermented down farther than the average for this yeast. (avg 75% shouldve been 1.018 but its 1.011 at 85%) (i did pitch right onto the cake from oktoberfest so shouldve been a lot of cells). i brewed this first on a double brew day so the mash was sitting for the full 60 if not longer. i was actually away at gabf so didnt do the exact procedure below, but rather rest the chamber for on the morning of day 4 before i left town. on the morning of day 7 i measure 1.011 and turned the chamber back down to 35. consider diluting before kegging?
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  basically took the recipe word for word. 90 minute boil because of the pilsner malt, will utilize that time for more IBUs with less hops via FWH. https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/pickelhaube-festbier/
  
  for diacetyl rest, copied from virginia lager recipe :
  going to do byo fast ferment approach janFeb2017. reread but start at 44-50 let fermentation go 50% then (remove the probe from the fermentor let it reach ambient temp then...?) raise temp 5 degrees every 12 hours til you get to 65-68. once you get 100% you can crank down to lager temp (<40) for 3-5 days then you done. this will take care of diacetyl rest and apparently gets the lager completely done in 2-3 weeks.
  
  sources :
  
• https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/pickelhaube-festbier/
  
• https://beerandbrewing.com/make-your-best-oktoberfest/