Beer!

[nhradar]

So, last spring I thought it would be nice to brew a helles for the summer.
But then I never found an appropriate block of time to lager it. So the malt and hops lay around (I had decided to start with Jon Plise's helles, available in kit form from MoreBeer) for a while. I decided that, yeah, I just don't want to deal with lagering right now, and it's the wrong season for a helles anyway. SO, I decided to use the same set of ingredients with an ale yeast. It'll still be a bit blonde for the winter, but...

Anyway, looking for thoughts, especially from, well, you know who you are.

Plise helles ale
Author: Jon Plise/NHRadar

Original Gravity: 1.061 (1.045 - 1.051)
Terminal Gravity: 1.015 (1.008 - 1.012)
Color: 12.27 (3.0 - 5.0)
Alcohol: 5.96% (4.7% - 5.4%)
Bitterness: 10.1 (16.0 - 22.0)

Ingredients:
8 lb Bavarian Pilsner
.5 lb American Munich
.25 lb German CaraFoam
14.2 g Sterling (5%) - added during boil, boiled 110 min
28.4 g Sterling (6%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min
1.0 ea Fermentis S-33 SafBrew S-33

Notes
ferment at 64 F

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.2

Comments

[betweenstations.livejournal.com]

I do lager recipes with ale yeasts all the time. When I had the basement at my old house, it was one thing to be all monk-like and use the laundry area like a cold cellar, glass-on-cold-concrete, but we don't have a true basement here, and the garage is WAY too cold.

What sort of yeast do you plan to use?

Yeast

[nhradar.livejournal.com]

Safale S33. Fairly clean, high tolerance and with a wide fermentation range, but I've never used it before. I'm fermenting a little cool, at 64.

I actually brewed this a few days ago and forgot to post about it until now...it's in a fridge with a brew belt and external temperature control (ambient is around 55) in MA while I'm off in IA.

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

I have a random question as someone who knows very little about beer and even less about home brewing. :) What do the numbers in parentheses mean? I take it that color and bitterness and so forth are measured somehow, and the numbers outside the parentheses are the actual results. But what are the ranges?

[nhradar.livejournal.com]

Ha. right. I deleted the part that might have given a hint as to what they were. But, this is actually the part that you would be most likely to grok, as it happens. :)

Those are the BJCP-defined ranges for the beer style (Munich Helles). Homebrew competitions are judged by category, and those categories are defined by the Beer Judge Certification Program. I use a software package to do calculations and things, and it helpfully offers you the ranges when you are developing your recipe. I just exported the recipe from that program and deleted a couple of lines.

So, were I to be brewing for competition, those parenthetical numbers would serve as a friendly caution to find a more appropriate style category to enter in than munich helles.