Where is everyone at with their Helles recipes now-a-day?

[Brody]

I wanted to take everyone's pulse on what they've been liking in Helles' lately.

I've been doing the following recently:

Malt: Blending 3.8ebc Weyerman Pils with 7.5ebc Weyerman Pale Ale malt to varying degrees with a 5% dose of Carahell. I want to mess
around with VIMA & MUMA.

Hops: I have two kegs about to enter lagering now were I went with a triple hop schedule (Saaz & HM at FWH/60, 40,15) instead of
all FWH/60.

Yeast: I've switched over to 34/70 sourced from a local brewery from WLP 833 I had been using for some time.

Fermentation: The last two I pitched a little higher than my 48f target but set the thermometer to 48f. Took about 4-5 days to get
around 79% EVG at which point I transferred. I did get diacytel so I upped the temp to 59f/15c now. I pitched 175ml of very thick yeast
and oxygenated to between 6 and 7ppm.

Scavengers: I'm running two batches now, one at 25ppm (tasted clean now but we'll see how it holds up) and the other at 50ppm
(still an eggy smell in samples) SMB. My post lauter samples have been coming in <1ppm O2 so I dropped the dosage. Never got my hands
on AA but do have BTB (although I'm questioning it's use with all stainless and DI water)

I'm getting final attenuation a little over 80% and conversion efficiency in the mid 80s.

I think I'll settle into the 34/70 for a while but plan on playing around with fermentation, grain bills, and hopping regiments. Curious where everyone else is at?

[Crunk]

I'm getting ready to start brewing all over again, the system alterations converting to LODO, means I'm starting with basics, all around.

I'm going to start with a pilsner,
95/5 German pilsner/carahell
Hallertau mittfru @ fwh 40%, 60m30%, 40m20%, 15m10%

34/70

Good thorough documentation, and go from there. I dumped all my other beers, cleaned and sanitize everything and ran 2 water tests for leaks, at boiling temperature so it's sanitized even more now.

[wobdee]

I've been blending 10-15% vima with Best Pils and about 3-4% Carahell. Next one I think I'll up the carahell a tad. I want to start playing with some Munich in there one of these days.

I recently changed up my hops to Liberty to see how it compares to Hallertau Mitt.

For yeast I went a long time with Wy2124 but recently switched to 2206. My first Helles with it will be tapped soon.

Also playing around with a SMB, AA, BTB trifecta but I'm going back to my original higher dose of SMB, BTB and eliminating the AA. I think I was getting a brighter taste and better aroma before I started mixing in AA.

[Owenbräu]

I think the short answer is yes...

I've got 5 helles going now, looking at different balances of vima to muma: a 8/4/1, 4/8/1 and 6/6/1 with vima/lmuma/dmuma with 3.5 EBC Pima, a 6/6/1 with 2.5 EBC Pima and a 12/3 with lmuma/carahell.

Here is 8/4/1:

8-4-1 helles.jpg (818.86 KiB) Viewed 9843 times

[Crunk]

That looks tasty AA

[wobdee]

[Techbrau]

I've played around with a bunch of different grists and I think you can do a lot of very interesting things with pima/vima/muma, melanoidin malt, and all of the caramel malts between carafoam up through caramunich. That said my favorite grist so far is 85% 3.4 ebc pima (best malz), 10% light muma (best malz), 5% carahell (wyermann). The only beers that I haven't cared for as much are the ones where I tried to use too many different malts at the same time.

I think sauergut is important and imparts a fresh, tangy, yogurty flavor to the beer. It's very much in the background and you may not be able to pick it out unless you know what to look for, but it definitely lends a certain je ne sais quoi. It also supposedly has significant redox potential on its own, due to organic acids produced by the LAB that have antioxidant properties, as well as the oxygen scavenging capability of the LAB themselves who are purported to survive up to about 63-64c in the mash. FWIW, I add my sauergut to my strike water around 55c and give it a few minutes to circulate around before doughing in.

I still like WLP835 more than any other yeast I've tried.

I still like saaz and mittelfruh hops. I don't like too much late hopping. A 60 minute addition to hit 15-16 or so IBUs + 0.2-0.3 g/l aroma hops at 15-20 min or so seems to work well.

The mash needs to be adapted to the malt. The recent lots have had a really high gelatinization temperature and a low kolbach index (my most recent sack is 37). Doughing in at 55c or so and immediately heating to 65c for my beta rest, followed by alpha at 72 and mashout at 76c has gotten me 95-100% conversion efficiency. When I tried a simple 62/72/76 hochkurz with the same malt, I took a hit of about 15%.

Water treatment depends a lot on your water source. I think if your source water isn't RO and has some metals in it you will probably see improvements using a tannin like gallovin or brewtan. All of your equipment should be stainless steel, and it should shine like new before every brew day. If it doesn't then apply some PBW/BKF/elbow grease. I have the best results with about 30 mg/l SMB + 30 mg/l BB.

Paying attention to boiling is really important, but is highly system dependent. It took me a lot of batches to dial it in. Broadly speaking, the less you boil the wort (both in terms of intensity and time), the better it tastes and the less the color darkens. However, that's only up to a point, and if you cross that threshold suddenly you have nastyness like DMS in the wort/beer, or you get poor protein break which leads to haze, etc. You basically have to walk your system to the edge of the cliff until you're falling off, and then back off a little.

I make a fresh, well-aerated yeast starter for every batch because I don't like repitching. I make a 2-2.5 liter starter for about 15 liters worth of wort. I aerate after pitching with a 2 micron stone on a stainless steel wand hooked up to an aquarium pump with an in-line HEPA filter.

I like to pitch about 8c and ferment around 9-10c. Raising to 12c for spunding has worked fine for me too. I cold condition around 2-3c.

[Natebriscoe]

Trying out 90/10/3 Heidelberg, lt munich, hell today. So far I think Heidelberg is a bit clean for my taste, but we will see.

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[bjanat]

Did anyone hear the latest master brewer podcast, where someone from Ale Asylum said they use lactic acid to precipitate hardness and then decant off it? https://itunes.apple.com/no/podcast/mas ... 0384949303