Maibark

I tried my hand at a maibock back on 1/15, again taking advantage of the long MLK Jr. weekend to brew this year. This is becoming a tradition. Instead of doing a double or triple decoction, I tried to select mostly well-modified malts (the vienna was recommended to be step-mashed but whatever) instead of doing a double or triple decoction as per German tradition. I did throw half a pound of melanoidin malt in the bill to emulate a little bit of the extra body I might get through decoction mashing. We’ll see how it turns out.

I’m focused this winter on taking advantage of ambient temps in my house to do some lagers. This makes lager batch number two (the first was a rauchbier now in secondary at 35* in the closet next to my garage). My wife is due with our first kid in a few weeks, so I’ll have no life pretty soon but I’m still going to try and squeeze in one more lager in late February/early March before I move back to doing ales in April or May.

You’ll see some pics of the batch in this post, the first of which was probably taken 48 hrs. after pitch and the second which was taken 8 days after pitch as I write this post. The airlock is still bubbling once every 4 seconds or so and the temp has dropped from 56* at high krausen to just 50 or 51* which is roughly ambient temp in my beer cellar. Check out how the color has lightened!

Here’s the recipe I used (which is this guy’s recipe with a few tweaks):