Born on the 4th of July

Hippo Helles Bock, born on date: 4 July 2009

First try with a lager. Most things I've read on this style call it a "Spring Beer" I think because it's easier to hit the lower temperatures needed for fermenting with a lager yeast. But the brew club is having a helles bock / maibock competition in August so I figured I'd give it a try.

Spent Friday night splitting up a #50 bag of dry extract into smaller bags. Not sure that was worth the money saved for buying in bulk. For those who don't know what dry extract is. About the consistency of flour but gets very sticky when it comes in contact with any moisture, even just the moisture of your skin. Then it gets hard as cement, fun to clean up.

Anyway, so I brewed the helles bock, changed location to the back deck due to the fantastic weather. A bit warm so I had to stay hydrated, dug into a box of Point beer for that, bought it for the bottles. Same price as buying a case of new bottles, you do have to empty them though. Tough job. All in all not a bad beer. May have gotten too hydrated, after brewing, grilling chicken and cleaning up, Maria wanted to go see the fireworks, not sure how long after that, she woke me up and told me to go to bed. Not sure, but I think we missed the fireworks....

When I was researching helles bock recipes, it looks like there is no particular ingredients special to this beer, I was looking for specific hops, grains and/or yeast, seems everyone uses something different as long as it falls in the correct range for gravity, bitterness and color. So I used Centennial hops for bittering, Styrian Gold hops for aroma, Carmel 10L and Munich 10 for specialty grains and a dry lager yeast.

Lagers should be fermented at lower temps, around 55'. My basement is now at 60' so I've got the primary sitting in a bucket of water and am rotating frozen water bottles into the bucket, a tip I picked up on one of the online brew boards. Warmest I could get my beer fridge was 40'. When it goes to the secondary, you must ferment/lager at close to 32' so I've arranged the fridge to accommodate a carboy. There it will sit until mid August. Lagers take to much time! I want to try a barleywine someday, they take a minimum of 6 months!

Still need to write about my trip to Midwest Supplies, stay tuned.