Maibock

5/8/03 - Maibock. Ah, May (or mid-May), time for the Maibock, or as I like to refer to it, The Decoction Redemption. If you peer back into the foggy mists of last fall, you may or may not remember our last attempt at mashing in the Teutonic method: the Octoberfest. We couldn't get a good temperature mix after the first decoction, made some bad choices to compensate, and, dern it, the whole thing ended up goin' awry.

The Maibock went a whole lot smoother, in fact we were able to do a double decoction (man, that's cool). We mashed in around 125°F, with the first decoction raising it up into the mid-140's and the second bringing the whole thing to the high 150's. It's always interesting to hear people talk about highly modified malts and that decoctions are unneccesary, but, considering our malt bill was a mixture of Pale and Munich, the huge malt nose and nice color we ended up with will really have to make me think otherwise.

Overall I'm really pleased with this product. Nice orangy color, malty nose, sweet without being cloyingly so, and a nice bitterness that's perhaps a tad too much, but certainly not unpleasant. I look forward to perfecting our lager techniques with the Octoberfest next fall, but for now, enjoy. (back to top of page)

Malt:
2 Row Pale Malt
Crisp Pale Ale Malt
Munich Malt

OG 17.8°P
TG 3.8°P

Hops:
IBU - 35
Liberty Bittering
Liberty Whirlpool