My infatuation with schwarzbier started years ago when in the Navy on my first Mediterranean deployment (“The Med”). Even though it was 1993 and the American craft brew industry was just starting to discover the ability to make beer that did not suck, Europe was (and still is) the obvious master of the European beer styles. I did not get to go to Germany proper, but I did drink every beer I could not pronounce or recognize. Some styles were obvious wins for me, others took years to enjoy (I still don’t like barley wine). I fell in love with the Czech lagers and pilsners, anything from Germany, and even some of the Dutch and Belgian beers. The ones that really stood out on my Rolling Rock-calibrated palate were the rich lagers and anything amber colored or darker.

This is what a “heavy” sea state looks like. Sea States are numbered from 0-5, 5 being the roughest.

I know, I know, it is no huge surprise that the Germans brew killer lagers. But what did surprise me was that these dark beers could be so flavorful without any bitterness and without wandering into porter and stout territory. Schwarzbier has remained one of my favorite beer styles, despite its elusiveness in the American commercial market. This was a driving force behind my putting a recipe in motion and trying to figure it out.

Where to start? The first thing to overcome is controlling fermentation temperature. At the time I was putting the plan together, I had only two ways to control temperature. I could wait until the season here in New England was right, so my basement temperature would help keep my fermentation buckets and carboys in the 50-54°F range, or I could use my homebuilt “keezer” (aka kegerator) to get me in the temperature range. Either would be acceptable as I had already brewed several lagers using the “basement method” with reasonable success. The only issue with the basement method, is that the temperature can fluctuate high out of the acceptable range during the early fermentation. This affects the ability to reliably repeat the beer each time, which will obviously affect consistency. So for my schwartzbier, that meant we used the kegerator in order to control the temperature much more accurately.

How to formulate a recipe that would give you what you are looking for? Since I am reasonably new to the brewing hobby, I sought out a few sources. In my opinion, you should find a commercial example that you like. For me, that example was Kostritzer Schwarzbier. Not only was it something that I really love, it was actually German, and listed in the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guide as a good commercial example of the style (Dark European Lager, category 8B. It was not the top example though; that one was Devils Backbone Schwartz Bier, which is a VA company and also wonderful.) Once you know what you want it to end up tasting like, then you can research the “clones,” blogs, posted recipe resources, etc. I chose to use the example from Jamil Zainasheff’s podcast (The Jamil Show on The Brewing Network), which was based on his award-winning recipe in his book Brewing Classic Styles. I used the BJCP style guides and the malt bill percentages from Jamil’s show and came up with a recipe that finished at the higher end of the BJCP ranges for the style.

On that first brew day, everything went fairly well. I boiled for around 100 minutes to get great clarity and to minimize any dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from the pilsner malt. I then chilled the wort to 60°F and set my kegerator to 50°F (with 2°F variation). I had grown a good two-liter starter for my yeast (WLP830 “German Lager”), so I pitched the yeast in after oxygenating for a full minute. Primary fermentation was mostly completed in 7-10 days, so on the tenth day set the kegerator temperature to 62°F for the diacetyl rest for two additional days. For those not in the know, diacetyl is a mostly lager yeast byproduct that gives beer a “buttery” or butterscotch-like flavor and aroma. Lager yeast can reabsorb it at slightly warmer temperatures (if it was ever produced by the yeast). After this rest was completed, I then set the kegerator temperature to 50°F again and waited an additional two weeks before “crashing” to 36°F for two additional weeks and then transferring to secondary fermentation (aka “secondary”).

After a month in secondary, we carbonated at 13 psi for a week and I kept thinking about how it would turn out. Would it be anywhere close to what I had hoped? After that agonizing week of waiting, we put it on tap and were amazed at how well it turned out. It was clean, crisp, and the malt flavors came through as expected. The slightly roast character, combined with just enough noble hop bitterness, made it really interesting. The 4.8% ABV made it really drinkable, so much so, that we decided to bottle it within a few days so we would not drink it all before we could get it into competition.

We did enter this beer into the Ocean State Homebrew Competition, along with two wild fermented ciders, a smoked, nitro porter (BSP at Sea), and a Kolsch (Kings Bay Kolsch). It was our first competition, so we had the feeling it would be a bit of a bloodbath when it came to the scoring. In fact, it was a bloodbath for four of our five entries, which will be covered in other posts. But this beer did well, really, really well for the first competition.

For the first run of any new recipe, you know there will be adjustments with the grain bill, brewing or fermenting processes, or the packaging of the beer. We definitely took some of those hits with our other entries, but Seastate Schwarzbier scored 39.5 of a possible 50 points, winning the dark German lager category! This victory, while sweet, felt a little hollow as this was the only entry in the category. It was not until many weeks later that we realized that all the German lager categories were combined, so it was the best German lager period, which made us feel much better about that “gold medal.” As a category winner, the beer then competes in the Best of Show (BOS) round for the top spot of the competition. Of the 23 beers competing for BOS, Seastate finished 10^th overall (the BOS winner was a 42-point barrel-aged, stout), which was validation that this beer could be moved from the “experimental” to “completed” folders in the brewing software.

Since this beer enjoyed great success the first time, we brewed it again and used the yeast in the fermentation bucket to start the fermentation of a Baltic Porter, which is still fermenting in the new fermentation chamber as we speak. Seastate is a favorite on the taps at our house, and went over well at a recent tailgate, so this one will be in our permanent lineup.