Make this Maibock

You definitely don’t want a heavy beer, so make sure that your mash (if you’re going all-grain, but this is a great beer to convert to extract!) stays at 152°F (67°C) or lower. Unless I’m trying to build body (or making a sour), I mash everything at 152°F (67°C), so there’s no change for me, but if you’re a believer in the “lower-temperature/higher-attenuation” idea, then you might dip a couple of degrees lower. You want a lot of nice, simple sugars for your yeast to consume.

Like most lagers, you’ll want to keep this one nice and cool during fermentation. A good starting place is 50°F (10°C), with a slow rise of a degree or two per day starting on day three. Give this one time to finish up completely, though—you want as complete a fermentation as possible both to lighten the body and get a lot of good, not-hot ethanol into the beer. When fermentation is complete, package it up and start lagering: you don’t want to touch this one for at least six weeks, and I like two months.