#19 - March Madness Maibock (or M Cubed)

This beer was brewed out of necessity. It had been a long time since the latest brew, and Aaron was itching to get brewing. With March Madness (and the 1 year anniversary of BNB) coming up, Aaron decided a Maibock (fermented on Ale yeast) was the way to go. The name worked and it sounded like a great beer. Ironically, while picking up brewing equipment from Steve and showing off the newest member to the Big Nut family (baby boy Ian - 01/04/2011 - see more of Ian at littlenutbabyj.blogspot.com), Steve's wife said, "You should brew a Maibock". Clearly it was meant to be if she could pull the beer style Maibock from seemingly no where. Anyway...down to the details. - Aaron

3/21 - Kegged the beer. After sitting on the hops for 3 weeks (whoops), we racked this into a brand new Corny keg for Steve to take home and hook up to his kegerator. We still went with bottling sugar (4.5 oz).

The Vitals

Name: March Madness Maibock

Add-ins/ons: none

OG: 1.060

FG: 1.010

ABV%: 6.5%

Primary Fermentation: 2/21/11-2/27/11 (6 days)

Secondary Fermentation: 2/27/11-3/21/11 (22 days) - dry hopped on 1/2 oz Tettnang

Kegged: 3/21/11 w/ 4.5 oz Corn Sugar (first kegging)

Brewers: Aaron & Jeff

Recipe (5-gallon Extract)

4 lbs Pilsen Light DME

3 lbs 5 oz Munich LME

1 lb Munich Malt

1 lb CaraPils Malt

2 oz German Perle Hops (60 minutes)

1/2 oz German Tettnang Hops (15 minutes)

1 Tbsp Irish Moss

4.5 Oz Corn Sugar

Danstart Nottingham Dry Yeast

1/2 oz German Tettnang Hops (Dry-Hopped)

Steep grains in 5 gallons of water at 160F for 20 minutes

Remove grains and increse to boil

Add DME

Hop Schedule as noted in recipe.

Add Irish Moss with15 minutes left

Cool to 70F - add yeast (pitch yeast per directions)

Add Dry Hops to Secondary Fermenter during racking

Bottling - (Priming sugar into 2 cups water)

Fermentation
Well, we had another "blow out", which by the way has a totally different meaning now that we I have a baby!! Anyway, the day after brew day, we heard a noise while tending to the little one, but didn't know what it was. Walking down the stairs, there was a strong beer smell, it was clear then something happened to the fermenting beer, which is kept under our stairs. Sure enough, the top was popped and krausen was oozing everywhere. Below are pictures, you can see the airlock was completely clogged.
Thankfully, I'd already purchased a piece of 1-inch tubing after Jeff's mishap. I quickly cleaned/sanitized everything and vigorous fermentation continued, sending krausen through the 4 foot piece of 1-inch tubing into the pitcher of water.
Note to self...always setup primary fermentation as noted in the final picture (note, fermentation doesn't usually occur on my kitchen table, this is prior to racking into secondary).