Schwarzbier Brewday

I finally got a chest freezer for making lagers and generally controlling the temp of my beers. For an automatic thermostat, I got an STC-1000 which is awesome enough as it is, but a guy in the local homebrew club flashed it with the STC-1000+ ROM. That free upgrade allows you to program the STC-1000 plus with up to 9 fermentation profiles, which can each have their own series of temperature points and associated durations. Apparently one would normally have to pay $200+ for a commercially produced controller with those features.

In any case, for my first lager I decided to brew a 5-gallon batch of Schwarzbier following the recipe of p. 81 of Brewing Classic Styles.

German Schwarzbier
5 gallons
9# German Pils
1# German Munich
11oz Carafa Special II

Hallertau, 1.65oz, 4.0%, 60min
Hallertau, 0.5oz, 4.0%, 60min
Hallertau, 0.5oz, 4.0%, 60min (ended up adding .85 oz at flameout because I didn't want any leftover Hallertau hops).

Mash at 151F, boil 90 mins.

WLP830 - German Lager

Made a large yeast starter on 11/5/14.

Brewed 11/8/14 at a friends house. Didn't really check the OG etc.... but I believe I did get the right volume.

When the boiled wort was chilled to around 100F, I siphoned to a 6-gallon carboy and placed in the 45F fridge.

The next morning, the fridge and beer were at 55F. Pitched the whole starter, shook the carboy to aerate a little bit, then let it ferment.

Fermentation profile programmed into the SCT-1000+ is 2 weeks at 50F, ramp to 60F over 1 day, hold at 60F 2 days, ramp down to 50, hold for a day, then ramp to 35F and hold there.

By the afternoon of 11/11, there was a nice krausen and bubbling, By 11/16 it seemed to be at high krausen. Still bubbling and a bit of krausen on 11/19.

It doesn't smell like ale fermentation.... a little harsh. But we'll see how it ends up.

Transferred to secondary on 12/4/14, after the beer had entered the lagering period at 35F.

Bottled on 1/3/15, using table sugar as a priming solution. I will wait a bit longer before popping the first bottle, since I hear lager yeast takes longer to carbonate.