A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Dixie Cup (the long-running homebrew competition held by the Foam Rangers, a homebrew club in Houston). Ashton Lewis - BYO's technical editor and Mr. Wizard columnist - was one of the speakers at their "milli-conference." He spoke on how stainless steel was manufactured and issues that would effect homebrewers, especially how to clean and otherwise take care of stainless vessels.

Ralph Olson of Hopunion was also there and spoke about trends in hop growing around the world. He also had photos of the hop warehouse that burned recently. His office, and four of his hop warehouses, was right next door. Bill Covaleski, one of the founders and brewers from Victory, also spoke. The speakers were great, and I really admire guys who can get up in front of a bunch of homebrewers that have been drinking barleywine since 8:30 in the morning.

I judged one flight of beers for the competition - dry stouts. There were some very nice dry stouts in the mix, but also a couple beers that I thought were clearly too big for the style. Inspired by a great homebrew conference, I got off my duff and brewed last week. You could call the beer I made an American Octoberfest, I guess, although I gave it a little more downscale moniker - Vienna malt liquor. It's basically a roughly SG 1.060 beer made with 20% flaked maize and the remainder of the grain bill split between 3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg) Pilsner and 5.25 lbs. (2.4 kg) Vienna malt. The bitterness target was only 13 IBUs, from Cluster hops, and lager yeast (Wyeast's 2007) for fermentation.

The brewday went well, I mashed in at a thickness of about 3:1 (1.5 qts./lb.) at 131 °F (55 °C) in my kettle. I immediately began ramping the temperature to 140 °F (60 °C). After 15 minutes, I ramped up to 153 °F (67 °C). After 20 minutes at this temperature, an iodine test showed that the starches were converted, so I went to mash out, transferred my mash to my lauter tun and wort collection.

At the beginning of the 90-minute boil, I added a pinch of calcium (calcium chloride). This is something I do with most of my lagers to help the wort drop to an appropriately low pH during the boil. One hop addition with an hour to go and 1 tsp. of Irish moss with 15 minutes were the only other kettle additions. I wasn't quite sure what my gravity would be, as this was only the second full all-grain beer I had brewed using my new grain mill. I guessed I would fall between OG 1.055 and 1.060 and the actual OG was 1.057.

This is also only the second time I've used my new conical fermenter. One thing I learned from my first use (a Vienna lager) was that I will need to dump the yeast a couple times during conditioning, to get it away from the beer. My American Octoberfest/Vienna malt liquor is bubbling away nicely at 50 °F (10 °C). I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Today, election day, I am going to brew my "house ale," a robust porter (OG 1.064; 51 IBUs) The starter is ready, I cleaned a bunch of carboys last night, so...it's time to brew!