Well, since Vienna Lager tasted so good going into the bottle, I wanted to keep the lager train rolling along (so I could re-pitch the yeast cake too!) by taking another stab at a festbier. I kept on reading recipes and drinking various examples of the style, and this is what I ended up with (because I was honestly tired of looking into this!). The hope is that it is more traditional than the majority of modern festbiers. The dash of chocolate malt was strictly for color BTW (estimated 11 SRM) ;-)
Fetsbier - brewed 12/7/2013 (4.25 gallons post boil)
- Vienna malt: 5 lbs 1 oz - Pilsner malt: 2 lbs - Munich malt: 1 lb 8 oz - Crystal 75: 4 oz - Pale chocolate malt: 1 oz - Hallertau pellets (3.8% AAs): 1.5 oz @ 60 - 34/70 yeast slurry
efficiency was a tremendous 85%!!! OG: 1.064 - FG: 1.014 - IBU 21 - ABV 6.5%
kegged on 1/2/2014, and the sample tasted smooth and festively delicious! I can't wait for this to lager a bit longer and hit the tap...
update June 2014: after a few months lagering in a cold Pennsylvania garage, Festbier has turned into a really very smooth and malty-rich version of the style...*almost* too much so in fact. I would simply top off with more water next time to drive the ABV down and have a slightly lighter beer (will need to tinker in beersmith, but I think I want to keep it in the mid 5% ABV at most). The crystal malt is probably unnecessary as well, but one change at a time, right? especially when the beer is quite tasty already.