The Beet Beer Finally Gets Brewed

Wort boiling with beets.

Finally after several significant snow blowings, shovelings and other personal stuff that gets in the way of the normal day-to-day, the Beet Lager got brewed.  The color of the beer is strategic in this recipe.  The wort started out a beautiful hazy straw color with the  DME, maize and Carapils® malts.  It ended up with a tasteful red as you will see in the images after adding the cut up beets were added.  The SRM is 8.5 with the addition of the orange-red hue. See the scale Image below.

The SRM or Lovibond Scale

I didn't imagine that the amount of sugar that would be extracted from the beets would be as great as it was.  I was expecting an original gravity of 1.046 including 3 lbs of DME, 7 oz. of maize and 7 oz. of Carapils® malt in 3 gallons of water for a projected total of 1.058.  What I got was 1.075.  That's 0.017 greater than expected.

Beet wort in fermenter.

I pitched the White Labs WLP840 American Lager yeast after transferring the wort to the fermenter rand setting it near the bulkhead door where the temperature is 56ºF.  When fermentation begins, I'll slowly move the fermenter closer to the door to bring the temperature down to 50º and then rack to secondary and bring it closer to the door or in the bulkhead where it's 40º.

In the image to the right, you can see the color has deepened because the trub has been removed from the wort.

I added cracked peppercorns and some Grains of Paradise to the wort for a bit of spice.  

I'm looking forward to a taste of this beer in about ten days.