Five Blades Brewing

F' Everything, We're Doing Five Blades

Recent Posts

  • Charlie is My Homeboy
  • Happy Repeal Day!
  • Ceci n’est pas une bière
  • Derek for AHA Governing Committee
  • Quaffing a Better Engineered Beer
  • Home
  • Recipes
  • BeerXML for WordPress
  • About

Schwarz 2.0 – Split Batch Temperature Experiment

February 15, 2017 by Derek Springer 6 Comments

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.

It is no secret that Schwarzbier is a bit of a white whale for me (irony duly noted). Dark and smooth with a crisp toasty breadiness, Schwarzbier straddles the line between malty and hoppy while remaining balanced and crushable. Why am I so obsessed? Besides being a noted lagerhead, Schwarzbier satisfies my innate desire as a homebrewer to brew beers that I otherwise would never be able to find “in the wild.” But who am I kidding, really? I love brewing Schwarzbier because it gives me statistically one of the highest chances of advancing to the final round of the National Homebrew Competition 👌. Previous attempts of mine either turned out too roasty, like a porter, or too dry and austere, not even worth a full writeup. But as they say: practice makes perfect and I feel like I am getting really close.

Having been interested in performing my own split batch experiments for a while, my wife graciously gifted me a set of three gallon Better Bottles as well as a set of 2.5 gallon ball lock kegs so I could split my typical 5.5 gallon batches. I figured why not kill two birds with one stone? This Schwarzbier is the first of what I hope will be a great many split batch experiments of varying levels of scientific significance.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Experiments, Recipes Tagged With: experiment, lager, recipe, schwarzbier, split batch

Geburtstagsparty – “Traditional” Vienna

February 16, 2016 by Derek Springer 29 Comments

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.

geburtstagsparty wide

Anton Dreher has a posse.

Anton Dreher has a posse.

If you have spent even a little time reading my blog you know I am a big fan of Vienna Lager. Something about it strikes all right right chords for me: crisp, clean, full-flavored, well balanced between malt and hops, and just uncommon enough that I feel motivated to brew it consistently. Also, if you consume as much Mexican food as I do you know there are few beers that are as appropriate as a Vienna Lager to pair with a burrito. 🙂 My enthusiasm is infectious enough that now even my Internet buddies Marshall & Ray, Dan, Brian, and a few others have all jumped aboard the Vienna-train for NHC this year. I like to think I am doing my part to keep this style from getting dragged into the historical category.

The last time I wrote about Vienna Lager (Fiesta Cumpleaños) I came at it from the angle of a Mexican interpretation of the style, which tends to be a bit darker and with a lightly sweet/caramelly character. After publishing the article I got into correspondence with Andreas over at Daft Eejit Brewing (who has a great series on Vienna Lager) who convinced me to try brewing a more “traditional” version, consisting of mostly Vienna malt and just enough roasted malt for color. Well, I am convinced: I have brewed this “traditional” version a few times now and have been very pleased with how it turned out. I can hardly even think of things I would want to tweak with this recipe besides making more of it!

Read on for the recipe and some thoughts on making great Vienna lagers.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: lager, recipe, vienna

Fiesta Cumpleaños – Vienna Lager

March 16, 2015 by Derek Springer 17 Comments

Fiesta Cumpleaños wide

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.

Anton Dreher

Anton Dreher

I have a curious attraction to Vienna Lagers, a style that all but disappeared off the face of the earth, save for a handful of breweries in Mexico. If you do not know the story, it goes a little something like this: in the early/mid 1800’s a fellow from Vienna by the name of Anton Dreher formalized the process we know today as lager brewing with a beer he called Märtzen. At the time the “pale” malts were significantly darker than they are today and produced a beer that was a coppery reddish-brown with a significant amount of toasty melanoidin character. Flash-forward to the late 1800’s and an Austrian immigrant to Mexico by the name of Santiago Graf (whom little is known, unfortunately) opened a brewery using the traditions he brought from home, with the addition of a small percentage of roasted malt to compensate for the alkaline water of the region. Thus, as Vienna-style lagers began to disappear in their homeland (favoring pale Pilsner style lagers), the style lived on in a handful of breweries in Mexico.

My own interest in Vienna Lagers is due to San Diego’s proximity to Mexico: we are too far from Europe to easily get any interesting European imports, so in the bad old days before craft beer took over there was only bland macro lagers or a handful of Mexican imports to choose from. If you were lucky, a restaurant or supermarket would have Negra Modelo available; a fine beer and just about the perfect pairing for Mexican food. To this day, if I go somewhere that has Negra Modelo on draught I will likely choose it 80% of the time. Now that San Diego is a craft beer mecca it has gotten harder and harder to find any Vienna-style lagers (or lagers in general), so I have decided to take matters into my own hands.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: lager, recipe, vienna

Schwarz – Schwarzbier

January 15, 2015 by Derek Springer 2 Comments

Check out the rest of my recipes in the index.

Schwarz schwarzbier wide shot
There is a attitude in craft brewing (sometimes from brewers and certainly from consumers) that I cannot quite understand: lagers are garbage and should be avoided like the plague. I get it, we have all been abused by crummy American Macro Lagers for the better part of a century, but do not throw that baby out with the bath water! Haters gonna hate, but I find I will choose a high-quality, well-crafted lager over any number of ales 80% of the time. I consider the opportunity I had to sample unfiltered Pilsner Urquell straight from the barrel to be one of the highlights of my beer-life.

@derekspringer pouring some @Pilsner_Urquell cask beer #EBBC14 pic.twitter.com/HDEAE7pCX9

— The Church Cafe Bar (@thechurch_ie) June 28, 2014

Malty, hoppy, light, dark, or smokey, it did not matter: the lagers I had in Europe were excellent in way you write home about. I often find myself longing for the crisp, refreshing lagers I consume by the gallon while I am over there. San Diego being the craft-dominant town that it is I find that if I want to drink a classic-style lager I have to make it myself. Enter the schwarzbier: crisp, clean, and dark as night; a Pilsner with an identity crisis. If you think about it, the schwarzbier is the the original hoppy black beer.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: dark, lager, recipe

This Guy

Derek Springer

Derek Springer

I write code & brew beer--if you ask nice I'll share some with you :)

View Full Profile →

Top Posts & Pages

  • Neomexicanus Crowns Now Available!
    Neomexicanus Crowns Now Available!
  • Lactobacillus Starter Guide
    Lactobacillus Starter Guide
  • Neomexicanus Hops: What's Available
    Neomexicanus Hops: What's Available
  • About
    About
  • Neomexicanus Hops: A Primer
    Neomexicanus Hops: A Primer
My Tweets

Recommended Blogs

  • A Ph.D in Beer
    History of Fermentation – How do we know what ancient people drank?
  • Accidentalis Brewing
    Improving BJCP Tasting Exam Scores – REDUX
  • Ales of the Riverwards
  • BrewUnited
    2017 NHC Recap, Or, My Friends Are More Awesome Than Yours
  • Brülosophy
    Announcement: 2023 General Homebrewer Survey
  • HummingBrew
  • In Bounds Brewing

Search

Categories

Archives

Subscribe via Email

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Menu

  • Home
  • Recipes
  • BeerXML for WordPress
  • About
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Affiliate Disclosure

Five Blades Brewing participates in affiliate programs designed to provide compensation for linking to products. Compensation for product reviews will be in the form of the product itself and will be noted within the article.

Five Blades Brewing will not accept payment to complete a review.

Feeds

RSS feed RSS - Posts

RSS feed RSS - Comments

Copyright © 2023 · Five Blades Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...