High Oktane Ale

Usually when I am working on a collaboration beer with one of the local breweries the process is something like this:

1. Come up with idea
2. Flurry of emails
3. Brew trial batch
4. Review trial batch, make tweaks
5. Brew production batch
6. A few weeks later, drink it

My most recent beer creation project though is somewhat different.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Trader Joe's Oktoberfest lager which I have been enjoying greatly of late. A couple of days later, Ted from Brewers Union Local 180 in Oakridge, OR, emailed me to see if I had any ideas for an Oktoberfest beer as he had been asked to provide a cask for a festival at a beer bar near him. It was funny he should ask....

I have been playing with the idea of vaguely 'Central European' pale ale for a while now but had never really found a formula which appealed to me all that much, though I had considered a paler version of altbier as a contender. Ted's question pushed my thinking into overdrive and that coupled with a comment from Tom Cizauskas on that post made me think about doing a 'to style' Oktoberfest lager, but using a nice clean top fermenting ale yeast for fermentation.

The recipe ended up like this:

• 60% Dark Munich
• 40% Vienna
• 16 IBU Tettnang for 60 minutes
• 8 IBU Tettnang for 15 minutes
• Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale

The predicted numbers are:

• OG: 1.056
• FG: 1.014
• IBU: 24
• SRM: 12
• ABV: 5.5%

I am brewing my version tomorrow, though Ted brewed his last week and it is already casked up and will be ready to rock at the brewpub in Oakridge in about a week. A cask will be making its way to The Beer Garden, in Eugene, and to Machine House Brewery in Seattle.

From what Ted has told me, his version had an original gravity a tad bit lower than planned, at 1.051, but the final gravity was fine, so the beer is 4.6% abv, and to use Ted's phrase had 'a high drinkability factor right out of the fermenter'. The name for Ted's brew is 180 Oktane, so if your in the area over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for it!