Notes on a Brew Day: Helles VII

House beer: do you have one? A brew that you always keep on hand, or at least return to frequently? Perhaps it's a seasonal feature in your homebrewery's lineup? And, in a world where change is the only constant, is the recipe static? Or do you, like me, succumb to the urge to fiddle?

House beers, despite the implication that they're fixtures in your bottle fridge or draft lines, are actually a great place for experimentation: it's hard to find a more ideal proving ground for new ingredients or techniques than a recipe you know inside and out. Change the hops, manipulate the grain bill, try a different base malt or a different malt extract, switch out the yeast; or keep the ingredients fixed but change the addition times, add or subtract mash rests, adjust the fermentation temperature and/or schedule ... because brewing is so process-dependent, entire worlds of different (subtly or otherwise) beers reside in every bill of ingredients.

Also: any old hand or competition wonk worth his or her salt will tell you that a key to homebrew consistency is thoroughly knowing your system (everything from boil kettle to fermenters to packaging), so that you can more accurately gauge the effects of changing these variables in your house recipe ... or brew a consistent house recipe at all.

Now then, Helles VII. It's one of my house beers, but as the Roman numerals imply, it's a work in progress (remember? succumbing to the urge to fiddle); there's always a new hop, base malt, conversion to extract, yeast, or something that comes along that I want to try. There've been way more than seven iterations, by the way; patches have been deployed over the years to address IBUs, fermentation character, final gravity, etc., in previous versions.

I-III were to get the grist the way I wanted it. IV was pleasing to me and set the standard  hop schedule and yeast; other batches in the IV series experimented with different hop varieties. The V and VI series Helles played around with different  yeasts and fermentation regimens: WLP838, WLP920, Wy2308, Wy2124 ... All were quite tasty, but I'm old and set in my ways and went back to WLP833 (or Wyeast 2487 when it's around). 


The story of VII is a return to the elemental building blocks of a blonde lager - it's a single malt, single hop composition, test-batching a new-to-me Pilsner malt from Best Malz of Heidelberg. My preliminary impression is that what Warminster's floor-malted Maris Otter is to English pale malt (e.g., fracking awesome), Best Pils is to German lager malt.

Helles VII
10.5 gallons, all-grain
Target OG: 1.051

Grist:

• 17 lbs Best Malz Pilsner

Mash: 

• 151 F for 75 min *

Boil:

• 1.5 oz German Tradition @ FWH

Fermentation:

• Chill to 48 F
• WLP833 German Bock lager, 4.5 liter starter w/ stir plate
• 50-52 F for 10 days
• 33 F for 28 days

* Spare me your nerd rage, O my fellow lager louts - this ain't the mash schedule I set out to execute **, but due to familial obligations, strike water couldn't start heating until almost my bedtime. Factor in a mid-mash propane outage, and this became one of those brew sessions where done = beautiful. Helles VII.i will be a reboot with the multi-temp mash I wanted.

** Although going by the range of Kolbach index values Best gives on their generic analysis for this malt, a single-temp infusion could be totally fine.

Extract Version:
In converting some past iterations to partial mash and extract, I've had very nice results with Northern Brewer Pilsen malt syrup - the beer won't have the same depth of floral, slightly sulfury malt flavor that German pils malt gives, but it will have a great delicacy, attenuate well, and accurate straw-blond color. For a five gallon batch, substitute 6 lbs Pilsen malt syrup and 1 lb of Pilsen DME for the Best Pils malt.

---

So, that's the up-to-the-batch history of one of my house beers. Please use the response fields to share yours!