#3 Dusseldorfer Altbier

After brewing two Belgian ales the past two weekends, I started brewing the first of two German ales. I chose to start with a Dusseldorf Alt so I can grow a large colony of yeast to ferment a clean Kolsch either this weekend or next.

I went with a recipe from The Jamil Show on The Brewing Network. Unfortunately my local homebrew store didn't have the Vienna malt that made up 15 % of the grain bill, so I opted to bump up the Munich malt from 15 to 20 % and supplemented with Victory and Wheat malt to hopefully maintain some malt complexity in the final beer.

Dusseldorf Altbier


Batch Volume (Gal): 5.50
Pre-Boil Volume (Gal): 6.33


Total Grain (Lbs): 9.63
OG: 1.053     Anticipated FG: ~1.014     Anticipated ABV: ~5.5%


IBUs: 42.4
SRM: 13.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 82%
Boil Duration: 90 min


Grain                        (Lbs/oz.)          (%)
Pisner                           6.0                62.3
Munich Malt                2.0                20.8
CaraMunich 45           0.5                 5.2
Victory Malt                 0.5                 5.2
Wheat Malt                  0.5                 5.2
Carafa Special              2 oz.              1.3


Hops                                   (AA%)     (IBU)     (Oz.)     (Boil [min])
Hallertauer Mittelfruh      3.8          16.7           1                60
Spalt                                   3.9          17.2           1                60
Hallertauer Mittelfruh       3.8          8.5            1               30


Yeast
Wyeast 2565 German Kolsch


Water
1 tsp Calcium Chloride (90 min)
2 tsp Calcium Sulfate (90 min)
1 tsp Irish Moss (10 min)
1/2 tsp yeast nutrient (10 min)

I received my Barley Crusher malt mill last week and was excited to get around to using it. My local homebrew shop would always grind my grain using a corn mill, which I've heard is less than ideal for barley malt, and it cost me to have it ground at the store. It'll be great buying grain in bulk, not worrying about the freshness of crushed grain, and crushing grain using something that was intended for barley malt.

I mashed this beer at 150 F (with 5.2 pH stabilizer) and held it for 60 minutes. I think I was a bit groggy this morning and used the wrong value when calculating the amount of strike water I needed to mash the grains. Instead of mashing at my usual water to grist ratio of 1.25 quarts per pound, I ended up mashing a bit thinner at 1.5 quarts per pound.

After mashing, I sparged as usual by raising the mash to 170F and collecting 6.33 gallons of runoff before measuring my final gravity. I wish I had measured the gravity as it approached 6.33 gallons though. Once I measured the gravity, I had to remeasure just to make sure I hadn't measured inaccurately the first time. My OG value was 16 points higher than I had aimed for. I had originally only needed 70% efficiency to hit my target OG of 1.050; I ended up with 82% efficiency. Since I planned on racking this beer to a 5 gallon keg, scaling this batch up to 6.5 gallons would not work. I chose to brew 5.5 gallons at a slightly higher OG with the expectation that I'd lose about half a gallon during racking and/or filtration of the fermented beer.

The Kolsch yeast had a relatively short lag time of only about 5-6 hours which I'm glad to see. I'll try and keep fermentation around 60 F to get a nice clean fermentation, although it may be tough for such a small pitch of yeast to ferment clean at 60 F, even if it is an ale yeast built to ferment cold. If the Alt doesn't ferment totally clean, I'll at least have a large yeast cake to pitch into the Kolsch, hopefully leaving me with a nice clean and crisp lawnmower beer.