lager Archives - Five Blades Brewing

Schwarz 2.0 – Split Batch Temperature Experiment

February 15, 2017 by Derek Springer 6 Comments

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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.

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Geburtstagsparty – “Traditional” Vienna

February 16, 2016 by Derek Springer 29 Comments

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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.
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Fiesta Cumpleaños – Vienna Lager

March 16, 2015 by Derek Springer 17 Comments

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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.

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Schwarz – Schwarzbier

January 15, 2015 by Derek Springer 2 Comments

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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.

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