First brew day is a wrap.  There were a few bumps in the road but I now have ten gallons of soon to be beer in my fermenter.  The biggest lesson is pumps do not like whole hops.  This caused issues with chilling, transferring, and cleaning.  I am using a whirlpool with immersion chiller.  I figured I did not need a screen on the kettle pickup.  From now on I will try to stick to pellets only and use a hop bag if I need to use whole leaf hops.  The rest of the system worked great.

Efficiency came in at 90%.  It should be higher if I manage the sparge  water better.  I also think I will heat my strike water higher to hit my mash temperature faster.  I may try half way between my mash temperature and the temperature I would use when batch sparging in a cooler.  I also will fill the mash tun with enough water to cover the dead space under my false bottom and fill the pumps and coil.

Water profile.  I got relatively close using straight tap water and salts.

Target – Ca=110, Mg=18, Na=16, Cl=50, S04=275, HCO=70
Actual – Ca=109.8, Mg=19.4, Na=11, Cl=49.5, S04=215, HCO=101.3

Mash pH looked fine but I was using test strips and not a meter.  I did not acidify my sparge water.  I will be getting a meter and some latic acid to address this on the next brew day.

I think this beer came out great.  Munich Helles is a great show case for pils malt and I am interested in trying some more beers with it.  Three weeks is very fast but I do not taste any bad off flavors.  The only issue was under attenuation.  I was expecting 1.012 for my final gravity and I ended up with 1.017.   Sweeter then intended but not bad.  I think I might add another week to this lagering schedule.  I will track the gravity closely on the next batch.  I need to get a beerbug.

Next fast lager attempt @ 4 weeks:
7 days – 50° (half attenuated?)
5 days – Bumping temp by 3° every day (50° to 65°)
5 days – 65° (nearly fully attenuated?)
3.5 days – dropping temp 5° every 12 hours to 30°
7.5 days – 30°
Total = 28 days

My Munich Helles is happily fermenting.  The smell lager yeast puts off is quite interesting…  Nothing like an ale.  The following is the schedule I will be using.  It ended up lining up perfectly with my next homebrew club (unyha) meeting.

4/12pm – 50 degrees, beer placed in fermentation chamber.
4/17pm – 53 degrees
4/18am – 56 degrees
4/18pm – 59 degrees
4/19am – 62 degrees
4/19pm – 65 degrees
4/23am – 60 degrees
4/23pm – 55 degrees
4/24am – 50 degrees
4/24pm – 45 degrees
4/25am – 40 degrees
4/25pm – 35 degrees
4/26am – 30 degrees
4/30 – Rack to keg @ 10.5psi
5/7 – Ready to serve