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We have started brewing beers for the 250th anniversary celebrations of Clausthal University of Technology next June. We are currently fermenting a Pilsner and a Pale Ale, around 200 liters each. We are also currently trying out a lot, including brewing light top-fermented beers with various classic hop varieties as well as brewing pale ale beers with different aroma hop varieties and special hop extracts, which are provided to us by the company Yakimachief for experimental purposes. The focus is on the isothermal high-temperature mashing process developed by us, in which the usual rests in the mashing process are replaced by a single rest in the activity range of the alpha-amylase.
However, contrary to our previous experience with brewing malt, more recent tests with single-variety barley malt have shown that this current modern barley variety has a surprisingly stable beta-amylase, which is still active for a while even at 76 °C. With this special barley variety, which we will be reporting on in a specialist publication in the spring, the alcohol content of the subsequent beer can be controlled via the isothermal mashing temperature while maintaining the same original wort. We produced wort with this malt at different mashing temperatures, boiled it with several hop varieties and fermented it with a very fine Czech Pilsner yeast. We were amazed when we filled the young beers from the cylindrically-conical fermentation vessels into pressurized barrels and just 18 days after the brewing day we already had almost clear beers, which is also of some interest for filtration. We don't want to reveal any more at this point because these results will be included in a publication and later in a dissertation.
In addition, we are currently brewing beers with three yeasts that we found together with colleagues from the Technical University of Munich during the yeast search in the Harz Mountains. Next April 23, the Day of German Beer, we will be holding a mini-symposium at the brewery on the yeasts we have found and the wider range of topics related to them. At this event, we will also be offering three beers brewed with Harz yeasts and a reference beer for tasting, with moderate alcohol contents of around 2% vol.
Confirmed speakers are Priv.-Doz. Dr. Mathias Hutzler from the Technical University of Munich, who will report on the yeast hunting project, Dr. Andreas Mölder from the Northwest German Forestry Research Institute will report on the history of forestry in the Harz, and our lecturer, Dr. Martin Zarnkow from the Technical University of Munich, will talk about how the beer aroma changes when hops are inoculated with a yeast found in yeast hunting. We ourselves will talk briefly about the isothermal high-temperature mashing process at this event. Due to the current renovation work in the buildings of the chemistry institutes, we unfortunately have to limit the number of participants to 30 people, participation is free.