Vienna Lager
by the numbers
OG: 1.046–1.052 (11.4–12.9 °P)
FG: 1.010–1.014 (2.6–3.6 °P)
SRM: 10–16
IBU: 18–30
ABV: 4.5–5.5%
If you are a beer geek, certainly you know the name Anton Dreher. It was from 1836 to 1840 that he developed a new, paler lager. Brewed with the new lighter-colored malts of the time, it had a beautiful copper hue and the crisp, clean malt character of a great lager. He gained praise and fortune for his new Schwechater Lagerbier and eventually his Schwechat Brewery became one of the largest in all of Europe.
Today, we refer to this beer as Vienna lager and there are no breweries making their fortune solely on this style. It is a shame that Vienna lagers are hard to come by, as this is a great beer to have on tap year-round.
Vienna lager is a light reddish amber to copper German lager with toasty and bready malt character
that starts in the aroma and lasts all the way through the finish. People often describe Vienna lager as having a soft, elegant malt character, but it is not a sweet beer. A good example of the style should be well-attenuated with enough hop bitterness to have a balanced, but moderately crisp finish. This is a cleanly fermented lager (no fruity esters or diacetyl), with a soft, medium body that some describe as creamy. There should be no caramel or roast flavor. Hop flavor and aroma are low at most, and when present, have a spicy or sometimes floral quality.
A common mistake when brewing a beer described as “malt-focused” is to assume that maltiness and sweetness are the same thing. A beer with a lot of sweetness from malt is not necessarily “malty,” it is sweet. It may or may not also have a lot of malt character. It is quite possible to have a dry beer that has lots of malt flavor and aroma or malt character. When most beer judges use the term “malty,” they are referring to the rich grainy, bready, toasty flavors and aromas that come from the malt, not the residual malt sweetness.
As you might guess, it is possible to brew a Vienna lager using only Vienna malt. Vienna malt is kilned darker than most base malts (3-6 °L), but it is not as dark as Munich malt. A beer made from only Vienna malt has a nice bready, biscuit malt character, which is appropriate for the style. If you really want to get to know this style, you should try brewing a batch with just Vienna malt. While it is possible to make a nice Vienna lager without using Vienna malt, it seems like a shame to do so. For that reason, I always include Vienna malt in my Vienna recipes.
Often brewers want to make a beer like this more complex, using other malts to develop color and flavor. Usually this means using a portion of Pilsner malt for the base, which lightens the color and reduces the Vienna malt character, resulting in a less toasty, bready beer. Then you add back the missing malt character and color using other malts, such as Munich, aromatic, melanoidin, roast, and caramel. As a general rule, neither Pilsner malt nor Munich malt should be more than one-third of the total grist. Conversely, Vienna malt should always be at least one-third of the grist. Even when using light Munich malt, using it for more than one-third of the grist can overpower the Vienna malt flavor.
You can choose to add a small amount of mid-color or caramel malts (30-70 °L) such as CaraVienne and CaraMunich® to increase color and give a little residual sweetness to the finish. You want to use restraint though. Vienna lager should not have an evident caramel flavor. Keep these specialty grains to no more than 5% of the total grist. At most, the specialty malts should accentuate the malty Vienna notes, as opposed to competing with them.
If you want more color, or are trying to make a dark Mexican-style lager, a small portion (~1%) of a
dark, huskless grain such as Briess Blackprinz® or Weyermann Carafa® Special malt will darken up the beer without adding roast notes. Vienna lager should never have any roast malt character.
Since there are no pure Vienna malt extracts, extract brewers will need to use a Pilsner malt extract and partial mash some malts such as Vienna and Munich or use Munich malt extract as the base and enhance the color by steeping caramel or color malt. Most Munich malt extract is a blend of Munich and Pilsner (or other pale malts) in different percentages. The Munich malt in the blend adds a nice bready malt character to the beer, but keep in mind that Munich malt and Vienna malt are not the same thing so this will not make the most authentic Vienna lager, but it can get fairly close.
I like to avoid any work that I do not feel improves the beer, so I prefer a single infusion mash. Perhaps, historically, a brewer would use a decoction mash when brewing most German-style beers, but I find that high quality continental malts, a single infusion mash, and excellent fermentation practices will produce beer every bit as good as the best commercial examples. It is far more important to invest time and effort in fermentation, sanitation, and post-fermentation handling than decoction. If you have ensured that all of those other aspects of your process are flawless, then decoction might be something of interest. For a single infusion mash, target a mash temperature range of 150-154 °F (66-68 °C).
Like most beer styles, you can brew a good Vienna lager with almost any kind of water, but sometimes tweaking your water is the last key to perfecting a style. For Vienna lager, moderately hard, moderately carbonate-rich water is best. For very soft water, add gypsum and chalk, about ½ teaspoon of gypsum and 1 teaspoon of chalk per 5 gallons (19 L) should get you close. If your water source is very hard, you can always dilute it with some distilled water.
Hop flavor and aroma are never more than background notes in Vienna lager. Hop bitterness is restrained, just firm enough to provide a nice balance to the malt sweetness. I really like using German-grown Hallertau hops for flavor and aroma, although sometimes they are hard to source. Other German-grown hops, such as Tettnang, Perle or Tradition, work well also. These hops, when grown outside of Germany, can still work well but you should check with your supplier first if you are not sure how closely they match the German-grown hops. If you cannot get any of those hops, you do have some flexibility. The trick is to select hops with that same flowery or spicy noble hop character. You do not want to use anything fruity or citrusy. Some decent substitutions are Liberty and Mt. Hood. You can also try Crystal, Ultra, and Vanguard. It is really the overall impression that matters. The big picture is that you want very low hop character and a balancing bitterness, with both complementing and integrating with the malt. The balance of bittering versus malt sweetness should always be close to even. The bitterness to starting gravity ratio (IBU divided by the decimal portion of the specific gravity) ranges from 0.4 to 0.6, but you will want to target the middle, 0.5. While there is no real need for a late hop addition, I do like to toss in a little late addition near the end of the boil (last 10 to 20 minutes). Keep the addition to no more than a ½ oz (14 g) in a 5-gallon (19-L) batch. This might be too much hop character for the style when the beer is fresh out of the fermenter, but after a few months of lagering, it can be just right. A bit bold for the style, but not out of style. Since there is very little specialty malt or fermentation esters, these subtle amounts of hop flavor are more noticeable than in a bigger beer style.
You can ferment Vienna lager with almost any lager yeast, although my favorites are White Labs WLP838 (South German Lager) and Wyeast 2308 (Munich Lager). You will find that each lager yeast will emphasize different aspects of the beer. Some will have more malt character and some more hop character, but all can produce an excellent Vienna lager with proper fermentation. If you want to use dry yeast, Fermentis Saflager S-23 is probably your best choice.
As when brewing any lager, it is important to control the fermentation temperature and to pitch plenty of clean, healthy yeast. You want the beer to have a clean, low ester fermentation profile, but you also want to make certain that the beer attenuates fully. This is the most common mistake new brewers make when attempting lagers. You need to make sure you pitch enough yeast, provide enough oxygen and nutrients, and use temperature control to not only start the fermentation on the cool side, but then raise it toward the end of fermentation. This rise in temperature not only helps reduce some of the unwanted compounds produced during fermentation, but it ensures that the yeast is active enough to attenuate the beer more fully.
When making lagers, I like to chill the wort down to 44 °F (7 °C), oxygenate, and then pitch my yeast. I let the beer slowly warm over the first 36 hours to 50 °F (10 °C) and then I hold this temperature for the remainder of fermentation. If fermentation seems sluggish at all after the first 24 hours, I am not afraid to raise the temperature a couple degrees more. The idea is to reduce the diacetyl precursor alpha-acetolactate, which the yeast creates during the early phase of fermentation. Once the growth phase of fermentation is complete, it is important that fermentation be as vigorous as possible. It may never be as robust as fermentation at ale temperatures, but it is important to have enough activity to blow off aromatic sulfurs and other unpleasant compounds. Vigorous yeast activity at the end of fermentation also improves reduction of compounds such as diacetyl. Starting fermentation colder only works well if you are pitching enough clean, healthy yeast at the start. If not, you will need to start warmer (perhaps 55 °F/13 °C) to encourage more yeast growth. Even if you start fermentation warmer, you can still raise the temperature toward the latter part of fermentation.
Since diacetyl reduction is slower at colder temperatures, a cold-fermented lager may require a diacetyl rest. To perform a diacetyl rest, raise the temperature into the 65-68 °F (18-20 °C) range for a two-day period near the end of the fermentation. While you can do a diacetyl rest after the fermentation reaches terminal gravity, a good time for a diacetyl rest is when fermentation is 2 to 5 specific gravity points (0.5–1 °P) prior to reaching terminal gravity. Brewers ask how they should know when fermentation has reached that stage. My advice is to raise the fermentation temperature for a diacetyl rest as soon as you see fermentation activity significantly slowing. It will not hurt the beer and it should help the yeast reach complete attenuation as well.
It seems that every beer improves with some period of cold conditioning and this style is no exception. Traditional lager conditioning utilizes a slow temperature reduction before fermentation reaches terminal gravity. The purpose of the slow cooling rate is to avoid sending the yeast into dormancy. After a few days, the beer reaches a temperature close to 40 °F (4 °C) and the brewer transfers the beer into lagering tanks. If you want to use this technique, you will need precise temperature control so that fermentation slowly continues and the yeast remains active. Rapidly chilling the beer near the end of fermentation can cause yeast to excrete a greater amount of ester producing compounds instead of retaining them.
Personally, I prefer to wait until fermentation is complete, including any steps such as a diacetyl rest, before lowering the beer temperature. The yeast is far more active and able to reduce fermentation byproducts at higher temperatures. Once I am certain the yeast have completed every job needed, I use a period of cold storage near freezing. This time in storage allows very fine particulates to settle out and the beer flavors to mature. In any case, great lagers take time, so do not rush things.
Vienna Lager
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.050 FG = 1.012
IBU = 26 SRM = 10 ABV = 5.0%
Ingredients
5.5 lbs. (2.5 kg) Vienna malt (4 °L)
3.3 lbs. (1.5 kg) continental Pilsner malt (2 °L)
1.4 lbs. (0.64 kg) Munich malt (8 °L)
1.8 oz (50 g) Carafa® Special II (430 °L)
4.8 AAU Hallertau hops (60 min.)
(1.2 oz/35 g at 4% alpha acid)
1.6 AAU Hallertau hops (10 min.)
(0.4 oz/11 g at 4% alpha acid)
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min.)
White Labs WLP838 (Southern German Lager) or Wyeast 2308 (Munich Lager) yeast
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
I currently use Best Malz Pilsen, Vienna, and Munich, but feel free to substitute any high quality malt of the same type and color from a different supplier. Carafa® Special II is a product of Weyermann. My hops are in pellet form and come from Hop Union, Willamette Valley, or Hopsteiner depending on the variety.
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.5 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (a liquor-
to-grist ratio of about 3:1 by weight) and a temperature of 152 °F (67 °C). Hold the mash at 152 °F (67 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete, which may take 60 to 90 minutes at this temperature. Infuse the mash
with near-boiling water while stirring or with a recirculating mash system raise the temperature to mash out at 168 °F (76 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is
around 6.5 gallons (25 L) and the gravity is 1.039.
The total wort boil time is 90 minutes, which helps reduce the S-Methyl Methionine (SMM) present in the lightly kilned Pilsner malt and results in less Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) in the finished beer. Add the first hop addition with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings when there are 15 minutes left in the boil and the final hop addition with 10 minutes remaining. Chill the wort to 50 °F (10 °C) and aerate thoroughly. The proper pitch rate is about 340 billion cells, which is 3 packages of liquid yeast or one package of liquid yeast in a 1.5-gallon (6-L) starter.
Ferment around 50 °F (10 °C) until the yeast drops clear. With healthy yeast, fermentation should be complete in two weeks or less, but do not rush it. Cold fermented lagers take longer to ferment than ales or lagers fermented
at warmer temperatures. If desired, perform a diacetyl rest during the last few days of active fermentation. Rack to a keg and force carbonate or rack to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar, and bottle. Target a carbonation level of 2 to 2.5 volumes. A month or more of cold conditioning at near-freezing temperatures will improve the beer. Serve at 43-46 °F (6-8 °C).
Vienna Lager
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.050 FG = 1.012
IBU = 26 SRM = 13 ABV = 5.0%
Ingredients
7.1 lb (3.2 kg) Munich liquid malt extract (LME)
1.8 oz (50 g) Carafa® Special II (430 °L)
4.8 AAU Hallertau hops (60 min.)
(1.2 oz/35 g at 4% alpha acid)
1.6 AAU Hallertau hops (10 min.)
(0.4 oz/11 g at 4% alpha acid)
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min.)
White Labs WLP838 (Southern German Lager) or Wyeast 2308 (Munich Lager) yeast
Priming sugar (if bottling)
Step by Step
There are many Munich extract blends out there. It is always better to choose the freshest extract versus choosing one based on name. If you cannot get fresh liquid malt extract, see if you can find a dry Munich extract instead. Using fresh extract is very important to this style. My hops are in pellet form and come from Hop Union, Willamette Valley, or Hopsteiner depending on the variety.
Mill or coarsely crack the specialty malt and place loosely in a grain bag. Steep the bag in about ½-gallon (~2 L) of water at roughly 170 °F (77 °C) for about 30 minutes. Lift the grain bag out of the steeping liquid
and rinse with warm water. Allow the bag to drip into the kettle. Do not squeeze the bag. Add the malt extract and enough water to make a pre-boil volume of 5.9 gallons (22.3 liters) and a gravity of 1.040. Stir thoroughly to help dissolve the extract and bring to a boil.
Once the wort is boiling, add the first hop addition. The total wort boil time is 1 hour after adding the hops. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes left in the boil and the final hop addition with 10 minutes remaining. Chill the wort to 50 °F (10 °C) and aerate thoroughly. The proper pitch rate is about 340 billion cells, which is 3 packages of liquid yeast or one package of liquid yeast in a 1.5-gallon (6-L) starter.
Ferment around 50 °F (10 °C) until the yeast drops clear. With healthy yeast, fermentation should be complete in two weeks or less, but do not rush it. Cold fermented lagers take longer to ferment than ales or lagers fermented at warmer temperatures. If desired, perform a diacetyl rest during the last few days of active fermentation. Rack to a keg and force carbonate or rack to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar, and bottle.
Target a carbonation level of 2 to 2.5 volumes. A month or more of cold conditioning at near-freezing
temperatures will improve the beer. Serve at 43-46 °F (6-8 °C).
