Probably the final beer in my annual German series will be a very nice doppelbock. This is a re-brew of a beer that’s come out extremely well in the past. I’m really looking forward to fermenting it with two different yeasts. The 2015 edition of this beer got great marks at a few competitions but didn’t place. My thoughts on it were that it wasn’t quite aromatic enough in it’s malt profile. . So I’ll be adding some melanoidin malt to try and bump that up a little.

Update 2/15/2016

Brew day was a pain in the ass. Lots of wind made it hard to get to a boil. I’m going to have to invest in building a wind guard to fit on these keggles for 10 gallon batches. Gravity readings early made it seem as if I’d be high on gravity but ended up being around 1.074. So somewhat low for some reason but it tasted great and should be a fine beer. Pitching the yeast 24 hours later after it cools down to 50F.

Update 2/18/2016

Fermenting like crazy for the first couple of days. Still going now. Made a mess in the bottle of the chest freezer. Very thick smell of yeast character in there compared to the previous two beers on the yeast.

Update 2/28/2016
Final gravity on the 833 version was around 1.013 for an 8% alcohol beer. Final gravity on the 830 version was 1.016 for a 7.5% alcohol beer. Both taste like young doppelbock with my preference being towards the 833 version. The both need about 6 months to mature. I’ll carbonate these two, bottle them and put them in the closet until the end of 2016.

Update 1/30/2017
This beer was over-carbonated so it’s been hard to enjoy. I tend to believe this beer will behave similar to my previous years doppelbock and need another year to be worth drinking. Although I’ll have to let every beer rest before actually enjoying it. Or employ some strategy to reduce carbonation.