Our second attempt at a Mexican Lager and we're very pleased with how this one turned out. A new recipe and new yeast variety helps to keep things interesting, and makes it all the more satisfying when it turns out well.
Appearance
There's plenty going on with the malt bill in this one - with a mix of ale, pilsner, vienna, munich and of course some malted maize to get the required corn component for the style - and the resulting beer is a beautiful light golden colour. A little darker than your typical mexican lager (like Corona, for example) but not quite as dark as we initially thought based on the wort colour. It has dropped absolutely crystal clear as well which is pleasing and certainly makes it look the part.
We adjusted our cold crashing process for this batch and tried crashing at a slower rate - 1-2°C every 12 hours rather than just setting the fridge to 1°C and letting it chill to this temperature as fast as possible. We decided to try this based on a Brulosophy experiment that shows that rapid cold crashing can cause the yeast to excrete lipids and other oils that can negatively impact beer foam/head retention. Our anecdotal evidence appears to confirm that cold crashing in a slower and more controlled manner certainly does yield some improvements to the foam and head retention. We haven't brewed this exact beer before so we don't have a direct point of comparison, but there is a noticeable difference with this beer and just about every other lager we've done previously so we'll more than likely be utilising the controlled cold crash for future batches moving forward.
Back to the appearance of the beer - it pours with a fluffy white head that has some great retention and leaves some nice lacing on the glass as well. You know it's a pretty clear beer when you can see all the carbonation bubbles moving around in the glass.
Aroma
It smells like a lager, which is perhaps a fairly obvious thing to say, but there's no mistaking the characteristic aroma of a good lager yeast. There's a bit of malt character that comes through as well - with notes of bread crust and cracker and a tiny bit of corn. Hop aroma is minimal, not surprising given the relatively low IBU and hop content.
Flavour
There's a decent amount of malt character as you'd expect with the relatively complex grain bill. At only 20 IBU there isn't a great deal of bitterness, and the hops we used were a little old so we probably ended up with a little bit less bitterness than this, but it's well balanced and pairs nicely with the malt. The yeast has done a great job, fermenting out well and leaving a nice clean, refreshing lager flavour. It did take a good few weeks to condition and really hit it's peak as you'd expect with most lager strains. There's a little more residual sweetness - not particularly surprising once again given all the malts used, which we quite like and makes this beer a little more interesting than other lagers, particularly Mexican lagers (like our first one) that only feature pilsner malt and some corn/maize.
We had a few family members try it over the Christmas break and all seemed to like it - very approachable and sessionable - definitely a real crowd pleaser.
Final Thoughts
As we mentioned in our recipe post, this recipe was taken from pixelHop Beer Company who shared the recipe on the Spike Brewing Recipe Blog. It won several awards for pixelHop and we think we can see why. It's got a bit more happening than your typical lager which sets it apart from others without being too different, over the top, or even out of style. Thanks very much to pixelHop for sharing this recipe!
If we were to make it again, there's only a couple of things we'd probably change. First would be using W34/70 yeast - our personal favourite.
Second, we would adjust the mash profile and go for maximum fermentability - 30 minutes at 63°C then 30 minutes at 70°C. We used this profile for our Japanese Rice Lager which turned out incredibly well and we feel combined with the W34/70 yeast would promote a slightly lower finishing gravity and dryer finish.
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