36th State Prohibition Lager

I was inspired to brew this beer from watching the new Ken Burns documentary Prohibition.  Two of the major ingredients in this beer I grew in my home garden.   I used ingredients I grew just like a pro bootlegger.  I named it 36th State Prohibition Lager because Nebraska was the 36th State to vote in favor of the 18th Amendment, Ratifying the Bill.  The corn for the mash I grew in the back yard, and the Mt. Hood aroma hops was my first experiment in growing hops.

Above is my Nugget vines growing on the arbor in my front yard.  I have Mt. Hood on one side and Nugget on the other.  The Nugget is crazy and almost noxious the way it grows.  I was excited to get an ounce of Mt. Hood out of my first year.  Below is my homegrown corn grits.

I tried making this beer very different than what I'm used to.  My target gravity was 1.040.  I filled a large kitchen pot with one gallon of water and filled my brew kettle with 4 gallons of water.  In the smaller one I added my three pounds of dried and milled corn and a hand full of 2-row at 133 degrees, I turned up the burner and held it at 152 degrees for five minutes.  In my brew kettle I added seven pounds of 2-row and one pound of Marris Otter pale malt and held the temp at 140 degrees.  After the five minute rest in the smaller pot I boiled the corn for 30 minutes and it turned into a thick grits, almost like mashed potatoes.  After the 30 minutes I added the grits to the brew kettle and held the temp at 152 degrees for 30 minutes.

 
After the sanctification rest I poured the mash into my mash tun and began sparging with hot water.  After a 35 minutes sparge I began the boil with one ounce of Cluster hops.  At 45 minutes I added Irish Moss, and finally I added .7 ounces of homegrown Mt. Hood hops for a nice aroma.  This beer was also the easiest to boil with no "boil-over".  My Mt. Hood leaf hops below (they smelled amazing).

I cooled the wart and pitched some dry American lager yeast and took the beer to my root cellar to ferment at about 60 degrees.

My original gravity was 1.040, exactly where I was aiming.  I'll start secondary on Tuesday the 25th of October.

The lager turned out interesting.  It has a very European Lager flavor, a very stark bitterness that lasts a long time on the tongue.  The flavor is very smooth and it has a very light taste.  The color is also very very pale.  The experiment was successful on the bottle conditioning.  It has a good carbonation and the bottles make quite a "pop" when you open them.  Although, you need to drink the whole bottle that night because the next day it is almost too flat to drink.  Over all, not too bad for a beer I grew half of.