One of the things I have learned throughout this past year of brewing is to always have plenty of beer on hand. There are a few reasons why I would want to do this, first of all its never a good day when you realize you are out of beer and have a few weeks to wait until the rest is ready. Secondly it allows you to wait to drink specific beer until they are ready to drink or until its the season or the reason to drink. If you don’t you chip away at a keg, pint by pint until low and behold you don’t have any or enough when you need it. With this in mind I started my Oktoberfest early, its the first time I have made this style and the brew day went very smooth all in all. This version is based off of Jamil’s recipe, I made modifications from that but I used it as a base style.

This is the kind of beer I can imagine drinking with friends on the first days of autumn, when the leaves are changing. Or at least in my mind that’s what I see. Since this will need to lager for awhile, I wanted to make sure it is ready to drink in September (amoung other beer).

Recipe: Oktoberfest
Brewer: Jake Huzel
Style: Oktoberfest/Marzen
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
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Batch Size: 22.00 L
Boil Size: 27.59 L
Estimated OG: 1.053 FG 1.011
Estimated Color: 10.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 26.3 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amount         Item                                     Type         % or IBU
2.80 kg        Pilsner (2 Row) CAN (1.0 SRM)            Grain        53.3 %
2.00 kg        Munich Malt – 10L (10.0 SRM)             Grain        38.1 %
0.45 kg        Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM)               Grain        8.6 %
28.30 gm       Hallertauer, New Zealand [7.00%]  (90 minHops         21.4 IBU
28.30 gm       Sterling [8.70%]  (5 min)                Hops         4.9 IBU
Repitch        Czech Budejovice Lager (White Labs #WLP80Yeast-Lager

Mashed at 154F