Description

After wining Lager Than Life 2024, we spoke to the home brew hero Darren Sloan and asked if we could share his show stopping all grain beer kit with our customers! It’s no secret that we adore Czech Lagers here at The Malt Miller so being able to share and home brew this recipe is something we are very excited about and encourage all of you to give this simple single decoction brew a go!

Here’s what Darren had to say about his all grain beer kit:

“This Czech Amber won Best of Show at Lager Than Life 2024. Originally brewed to be a Vienna lager, but the decoction and Barke malts really brought out some strong malt characteristics that made it more of a Czech Amber. Its always worth remembering to change competition style submissions to what the beer is, not what it was brewed as!

I used German lager yeast, which made it very clean, but a Czech lager yeast would also be appropriate. I would really advise to do a decoction as this really made the beer what it is and is actually simpler than envisaged for a single decoction.

Water Profile – Ca 55, Mg 5, Na 22, Cl 79, SO4 39, Mash Ph 5.3

The calculated OG, FG and colour will be off in your calculators compared to the final beer as decoction will give you more OG (about 4pts in my case) and my FG was a couple of pts lower than calculated, the colour will also be a darker red/copper than calculated”

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Ingredients Included

Simpsons Malt – Chocolate Malt
Weyermann Carafa Special type 2
BESTMALZ Chit Malt
Weyermann Barke Munich Malt
Weyermann Barke Vienna Malt
Hallertauer Magnum – BarthHaas® Pure Hop Pellet (6 grams)
Saazer – BarthHaas® Pure Hop Pellet (65 grams)
Imperial Yeast L17 Harvest. BB: 06/04/2024 (1 pack)

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Method

Beer Style (main): European Lagers
Beer Style (sub): Vienna-Style Lager
Batch Size: 21L
Original Gravity: 1.057
Final Gravity: 1.012
ABV %: 5.9
IBU: 24
Mash efficiency: 77.5
Brewing equipment: Brewtools B40Pro all in one

THE MASH
Temperature °C (Step 1): 65
Length (mins) (Step 1): 60
Temperature °C (Step 2): 75
Length (mins) (Step 2): 10

Mash notes: Single decoction used during the 1st mash.
After 15mins into the 65c mash, take out approx 5L of thick mash into a separate pot (I used a 6L casserole pot), and slowly bring to the boil, stirring continuously to avoid scorching. Boil for 10mins, then return to the main mash once it has completed its 65c mash step.

THE BOIL
Boil time (mins): 90

Hop / kettle additions and timing:

90 mins 45g Saaz
90 mins 6g Magnum
1 min 20g Saaz

Yeast: Imperial Harvest L17 – 1 pkg made into a 2L starter and decanted prior to adding to fermenter
Fermentation temperature/steps: 10c for 2.5 days. Then slowly raise to 16c over 4 days. Hold at 16c until final gravity reached. Cold crash to as close to 1c as possible and add finings if you like. Keg after a week and keep cold for as long as possible.

Secondary additions:

(Optional) Gelatin finings used during cold crash – 1tsp of gelatine in 300ml of water. Boiled water, cooled to 25c, added gelatine and left for 30 mins, stirred and then heated to 65c in microwave, let chill to 30c, added to fermenter