"British Helles" - Any ideas?

[Fr_Marc]

As the forum is very calm at the moment, I may as well ask a silly question.

I intended to brew a Bavarian Helles for this summer and got all the ingredients. The plan was to brew in late winter/very early spring to make use of the low temperatures in my garage. You know, Bavarian Lager yeast and stuff. Than life happened. Now it is June and the cool days are gone. No Helles has been brewed. The ingredients are still in my basement. So an ale it will be! Problem is: all the grain is vacuum packed together in one big bag.

The grain bill is as follows:

3.6 kg Extra Pale Premium Pilsener Malt (80%)
0.5 kg Vienna Malt (11.1%)
0.2 kg Munich I Malt (4.4%)
0.1 kg Melanoidin Malt (2.2%)
0.1 kg Carafoam Malt (2.2%)

Do you have any ideas or suggestions what to do with it? The easy (and boring) solution would be to brew a pseudo lager with either NovaLager yeast or - God forbid! - Lutra kveik. I don't like boring solutions. Or anything pseudo.

Which British yeast would you chuck in to make something tasty for summer? I always wanted to try a Yorkshire strain. But in such an unorthodox brew?

Looking forward to your ideas. Thanks a lot!

Marc

[Cobnut]

I'm guessing you have no temperature controlled fermentation chamber where you could hold the temperature around 10-12C and brew as planned.

One option would be to use some New World hops and a clean ale yeast like US-05 and make a kind of golden ale/pale ale. I think you should end up with something very drinkable for the summer.

[JonB]

You could stick with your original plan but try a Kolsh yeast, they work well at warmer temperatures and are very clean.

Would produce something helles like I would have thought?

I don't like Lutra for lager, it produced a weird set of background flavours in a pils type lager that were not very nice, and don't even try and bottle condition it (worst behaving yeast I've ever used for it, even after 6 months it wouldn't pour a clean pint...)

[Fr_Marc]

I'm guessing you have no temperature controlled fermentation chamber where you could hold the temperature around 10-12C and brew as planned.

That's exactly the problem.

One option would be to use some New World hops and a clean ale yeast like US-05 and make a kind of golden ale/pale ale. I think you should end up with something very drinkable for the summer.

Fair enough. If I am going down the ale route, I do like a yeast with a little bit of character, though.

[Fr_Marc]

You could stick with your original plan but try a Kolsh yeast, they work well at warmer temperatures and are very clean.

I was thinking about this possibility, too. Or even risk trying the Lallemand NovaLager yeast - it is supposed to manage fermentation temperatures up to 20°C. But I am not sure if that is true.

I don't like Lutra for lager, it produced a weird set of background flavours in a pils type lager that were not very nice, and don't even try and bottle condition it (worst behaving yeast I've ever used for it, even after 6 months it wouldn't pour a clean pint...)

So far, I have brewed to German style beers (Altbier and Frankonian Dunkel) with Lutra Kveik. Both were fine beers bad had a strange background taste which I can't really nail down. Think it was the Lutra, though. To be fair I have to say that I botteled both brews and they poured very clear (see attached photo).


Side by side comparison of Kreuzberg Klosterbier and my clone attempt using Lutra kveik. It was a beautiful beer. I have to brew it again with a proper Bavarian lager yeast, though.

[JonB]

You've done better than me then, if I was using Lutra again I'd want to filter it but whatever you're doing is clearly working

A couple of chaps in our homebrew club have brewed warm with Kolsh and their beers were definitely clean and clear; can't comment on Novalager though as neither I or (to my knowledge) anyone else in my group has used it. I have heard good things about it though.

It may also be worth your time reading this (and various other similar) articles from Brulosophy that suggests fermentation temperature is not as critical as previously thought. Perhaps you can get away with a more floculent lager strain and once bottled/barrrelled/kegged condition in the fridge?
https://brulosophy.com/2016/02/08/ferme ... t-results/

[Fr_Marc]

Thanks, JonB. Interesting article over at brulosophy. I guess I will just go on as planned then and see what happens.

[drjim]

I generally use crossmyloof brew kolsch yeast for lagerish stuff in the summer. I did do some very nice lager and vienna lager in Feb with Bigger jugs pils yeast, all done at ambient in the shed so the lagers were 11-15 degrees for a month and as I say very nice. The kolsch stuff works fine at UK spring/summer ambient. If it ever goes much over 20 I do have a fridge I can use for cooling and planning to build into a bigger chamber, but it doesn't go above 20 that often in Manchester! Beer seems to turn out OK so different yeast rather than electricity for cooling!

[JonB]

Thanks, JonB. Interesting article over at brulosophy. I guess I will just go on as planned then and see what happens.

No worries, let us know how you get on!