It’s that time of the year again and soon the surplus of the Oktoberfest brews will make it to specialist shops world-wide.
The modern Oktoberfest is much lighter than it used to be. Here is a table of how they compare among each other. One is not mistaken that the modern brew is simply a Helles brewed at higher gravity.
Brewery | OG | ABV | Bitterness | Colour (EBC) | Brewmaster |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Augustiner | 13,8 | 6,4 | 19 | 7 | Werner Mayer |
Hacker-Pschorr | 13,7 | 5,8 | 23 | 10 | Andreas Höflinger |
Hofbräu | 13,7 | 6,3 | 26 | 9 | Rolf Dummert |
Löwenbräu | 13,8 | 6,1 | 27 | 8 | Michael Müller |
Paulaner | 13,6 | 6,0 | 21 | 8 | Christian Dahncke |
Spaten | 13,7 | 5,9 | 24 | 7 | Harald Stückle |
The Hofbräu Oktoberfest was often my favourite. I don’t know what happened last year, maybe my taste-buds turned? I found it way too salty and rather harsh to drink. This said, everyone knows that it is a seasonal brew, so these kinds of variations are expected.
I once made a fest-beer that was quite close to the Hofbräu. Here is the grain bill
Malt | Colour (EBC) | Amount |
---|---|---|
Pilsener | 3,1 | 64% |
Wiener | 8,0 | 30% |
Münchner | 11,0 | 6% |
It works really well with the classic cold fermentation and WLP838 — if one has enough time to wait for the sulphur to disappear (for me that’s usually 8 weeks in lager), alternatively any W34/70 strain, such as WLP820 will do nicely as well. Other malt-forward lager strains should also be suitable.
The Hofbräu is quite floral. So a good hop would be the tried and trusted Mittelfrüh or Spalt Select. Nowadays I tend to favour Tettnanger and Hersbrucker, so this year its probably going to be them. And because I don’t have time to wait, I’ll do an accelerated classic fermentation together with WLP820.
Let’s see how this turns out…
I have a question surrounding attenuation and color. I’d like to make an Augustiner style Festbier. When I look at the attenuation of available Augustiner strains (Imperial-L17-Harvest (70%-74%), Omega-OYL114-Bayern(72%-76%)) it seems impossible to get from 13.8°P to 6.4% ABV (based on Brewfather) furthermore the above stated 7EBC in color seems to be reached already based on a grist of pure pilsner malt not even taking into consideration the addition of color with the Earlsche Maischverfahren (decoction substitute) let alone the addition of Vienna malt often stated to be necessary. How to tackle these?
LikeLike