#88: Nashville Pre-Prohibition Amber Ale

[swenocha]

Gerst, based in Nashville, was the largest brewery in the south in the pre-prohibition era. Prohibition, and the era of BMC going national, killed the company as a brewery, but the name continued via the Gerst Haus restaurant and contract brewing in the 80's and early 90's. In the last few years, Yazoo picked up the banner and started to brew the classic Gerst Amber, or, actually, a reasonable representation of it, as the actual recipe is lost to history. Linus worked with the owners of the Gerst Haus, doing several test batches until they got the essence of the beer to the liking of the family.

Way back when Yazoo's version of Gerst first came out, Linus posted the recipe breakdown as follows:

Yazoo Gerst Amber

50% Pale malt
31% Vienna malt
12% Cara 20 malt
7% Flaked maize

Bittered with Perle, flavor and aroma with Tettnanger
OG: 11 Plato
FG: 2.5 Plato
IBUs: 11
SRM: 5.0

Fermented on the cool side with our house ale yeast, around 62 F for primary fermentation.

From that post I went with the following recipe for a 3 gallon batch (The new write-up on the Yazoo site lists it a little darker (8.3 SRM) and a little higher ABV (5.1% instead of 4.5%). I accounted for this a little bit, but kept the base percentages of things near what Linus stated):

Amount Item Type

3.00 lb 2-Row (2.0 SRM) Grain
2.00 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain
0.70 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain
0.41 lb Corn, Flaked (1.3 SRM) Grain

Boil Amount Item Type

55 min 0.16 oz Pearle [7.70 %] (55 min) Hops
20 min 0.16 oz Tettnang [4.50 %] (20 min) Hops
7 min 0.16 oz Tettnang [4.50 %] (7 min) Hops

Amount Item Type

1 Pkgs London ESB Ale (Wyeast Labs #1968) Yeast-Ale

OG: 1.050
estFG: 1.015
IBU: 11.0
SRM: 6.8


Super smooth brew day. I actually got much better efficiency than anticipated, and hit 1.065 on the OG. Missed my volume a tiny bit, but nothing worth worrying about.

[BlackDuck]

Looks good. I would sure say you got good efficiency on that...you blew your predicted OG right out of the wort.

[Beer-lord]

Are the speakers so that you can hear it fermenting from 2 rooms away?
Never used Tettnang and am curious what it brings to the beer.

[swenocha]

I had accounted for the low efficiency (68%) I had seen on my recent BIAB efforts. Of course, this one hit better efficiency than I have ever gotten (88%!), though the number is skewed because I came in a bit below volume.

The speakers provide the soundtrack (Colin Hay was today's soundtrack, and a frequent brewing soundtrack over the years)...

Tettnang is a traditional German hop that is pretty gentle (low alpha). Gives some floral and a bit of spice.