German Brewing

Hi all !

I'm a french home brewer, i live south of France but come from north-east, near Belgium,
Germany and Alsace I drink beer everyday since more than 10 years but i brew my first all grain
only 1 years ago. I like light and drinkable beers (ie low ABV ^^) like pils, lager, kolsch, etc.
33yo sys admin.

I land here with my searchs about decoction. I see your "Interesting German Brewing PDF" on HBT
forums and BryanR's brewing setup with ton of interesting things , so i make an account and
presenting now. Thank you for this nice forum (and blogs, specially edelstoffquest), it usefull because
i dont speak german lol and there are only few information in french.

I log my brewdays in a blog, 21 batchs at this time, 2 with decoction

Cya brewers

Hi everyone!

I've been reading this forum to death and decided to add to the discussion! I'm from Australia with some German heritage and saw techbraus post on the AHB forums about LODO. I've been very impressed by the work that has been by some of the members on this site over the past few months and regarding the application of science when it comes to brewing. I'm looking forward to making better beer with all of you

Cheers,


Luke

Oops, I missed the introduction thread before I started asking all kinds of questions on the forum. I'm one who always dives in the deep end so that's typical. I'm a homebrewer in the VA/DC/MD metro area and a big German Lager fan so ending up here was inevitable.

Currently brewing 3 gallon batches with an Igloo cooler mash tun + 5.5 gallon kettle. I'm also a glutton for punishment, I didn't hesitate when I started brewing pilsners to do decoction mashes regardless of the snickers I got from my brewing freinds. Hoping to move to a better system, may end up buying a Grainfather and trying to optimize it for LODO.

Can' say thank you enough for the great resource and for all the helpful souls here.

Found this forum after some of the threads about Low Dissolved Oxygen brewing. Since then, I've had the itch to upgrade my system and take a serious look at LoDO.

I brew 5 gallon batches with a cooler, and Al kettle with an electric element in my kitchen. About 5 or 6 times a year I brew with propane on a rig I have outside in Keggles. I love brewing lagers, so I'm excited to try out some of the new techniques to try to improve the final product, and improve the consistency of the product as well.

I also brew lots of sour beers, and I'm looking forward to trying some of the LoDO techniques for American styles--I'm 90% sure my inconsistent success is due to O2 pickup after boiling or after fermentation. I'll spund my next IPA for sure.

Hi, my name is Steven. I brewed my first extract batch (APA) in 1997 and did a few more here and there over the years but never regularly. About a year ago, I decided to get serious and put together a 3 vessel all grain system with good fermentation temp control. My goal was (and is) to recreate the beers I drank in Germany and Austria, which I fell in love with during annual trips to Vienna to visit my in-laws over the last 17 years. There is no question in my mind that there is something about the malt character in fresh German beer that is difficult to find in the US.

In the last 10 months I have brewed 12 batches: 9 German pils, 2 helles, and 1 koelsch. 11 of them were good, but none of them were good enough. Maybe the malt flavor I'm looking for is hard to find because it's hard to create and preserve.

So I was excited to read the "On Brewing Bavarian Helles" paper soon after it was released...it turns out other people are chasing the same things I am. I immediately started adopting some of the recommendations (pre-boil, SMB, no splash, closed lid during mash, soft boil, closed fermentation with spunding valve). I did not eliminate headspace in my mash tun and did not follow the recommended fermentation schedule and packaging techniques as closely as I could have.

My initial results do nothing to address the lack of scientific data to prove the benefits of LoDO brewing, but I can add to the pile of anecdotes. I split one batch and fermented half using typical methods in a glass carboy and half using a keg with a closed transfer into a purged serving keg. The difference in malt character between those beers is enough for me to decide to work to close of the gaps in my approach and adopt the recommended LoDO method completely. While I may have started trying LoDO out of sheer hope, I will continue to embrace it based on a growing conviction.

Thank you to those of you who have charted the LoDO course. I look forward to continued improvement of my German lagers and will be sure to report back when I have developments worth sharing.

-Steven

Hi everybody

I found my way here through a link from a friend to one of your articles about low oxygen brewing; liked it a lot and now I'm here.

I'm from Finland, started homebrewing 2 years and 2 days ago (Facebook told me ). I was bit so hard by the brewing bug that now I work at a brewery, which is crazy Anyways, the deeper I get into brewing and beer, the more I've started to appreciate quality. Couple of weeks ago at Finland's biggest beer festival I was downright disappointed with the contrast of the huge variety of beers compared to the really low quality of most of them.

German (and Czech and Belgian) beers are what I've been gravitating towards in search of quality. It just seems so hard to get to that quality without expensive technology. So your site's approach fits my bill exactly

I have this long time plan in my head, about a small brew pub, or actually just the brew pubs' brewery part(I have a place ready for this), with something like 200-liter brewhouse serving straight from the tanks only at the pub. The equipment would probably need to be built mostly from scratch, but maybe this is a project that I might get a lot of ideas and help from you guys?

Nice to be here

Glad to see all the new members here.