Brewing German Alt

So I finally decided what I wanted to brew and it was something I had never brewed before. I have recently tried a few Alt beers from Germany and I have really enjoyed them, so I figured what the hell I would take a shot at brewing one. I looked through a few of my recipe books and couldn’t find one I liked so I decided to buy a kit. Normally, I prefer to put together my own recipes, but because it is a style that I have never brewed before I decided a kit was the way to go. So here we go:

I unpacked the kit and took a brief look at the brewing instructions and then got some water brewing. I put 2 1/2 gallons of water in my brew pot and got it heating. While it was heating up, I weighed out one pound of the supplied grains into a mesh bag.

Once the water was at 170 F, I put the bag into the pot to steep for twenty minutes.

After steeping the grains, I removed the bag allowed it to drain as much as possible then tossed the spent grains into the trash. A quick note about buying grains, if you are going to purchase them pay the extra 10 cents per pound to get them crushed because if you don’t own a grain mill it is a pain in the ass to get them crushed.

Then I brought the water to a boil and added both the malt syrup and the dry malt extract.

The trick to pouring the malt syrup is to put the entire container in pot of hot water for about 15 minutes before you need it. The water heats up the syrup making it much easier to pour and mix in the wort. There is no picture of the dry malt being added as I needed both hands to sprinkle it in and mix at the same time. If you just pour the whole bag in the wort and then mix it you end up with a lot of clumps of dry malt extract that doesn’t get mixed in well.

After all of the extract is added, I returned the wort to a frothy boil:

Once it begins to boil like this is when you start your 60 minute timer. I added 1 oz of Perle Hops at the start of the boil, then another 1 oz 15 minutes later.

I take this long boiling break to get my dried yeast started. In a large mixing cup, I add about 1 cup of 80 – 100 F degree water depending on what yeast strain it is and what the manufacturer recommends. A little tip I also use is to add a 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar to the water. Then I pour the dehydrated yeast into the cup and mix it in well.

Back to brewing, I keep it boiling at a medium rate for another 40 minutes then add 1 oz of Hersbrucker Hops for aroma.

I let it boil for another 5 minutes then remove it from heat and place the whole pot right into a ice batch in the sink to cool the water. I change the water in the sink around the pot quite a few times to keep it cold and keep the pot chilling. Once this beer was temping right around 80 F (oh by the way, all of my temperature measurement are coming from a simple calibrated meat thermometer) I was ready to transfer it to the fermenter.

When transferring the beer at this stage you want to leave all the sludgy, gross junk a.k.a trub in the pot. I like to get the most out of my beers so I will try to strain as much of the beer as I can without getting a lot of the trub into the beer.

Simple, but effective.

What’s left in the strainer and the pot.

All of this gets thrown out in the garbage. An important note about this trub and spent hops is to keep them away from your pets especially dogs. The spent hops are attractive to dogs, but they contain toxins that are poisonous to dogs.

Now that the beer is in the fermenter, my yeast is really starting to get active. It looks very foamy and almost creamy.

I pour it on top of beer in the fermenter and get the water running in the sink. I get the water to 80 F and then I use the sprayer on the sink to top up the fermenter to just over 5 gallons. Using the sprayer introduces a lot of air into the fermenter which also helps invigorate the yeast and get the fermentation started.

Then I put the lid on and add the airlock and voila, I had a beautiful new 5 gallon batch of German Alt. So to keep it in a cool dark place, a.k.a the entryway closet.

I’ll keep you updated as it progress, so let’s hope it keeps bubbling.