One of my favorite summer beers is Oberon. Oberon Day is a day that I eagerly anticipate from about January 4 forward, since it marks more or less the end of winter and the promise of summer’s arrival. A week or so ago, I was thinking about this year’s Oberon day and how awesome it would be to make my own imitation Oberon and have that on Oberon day, just for kicks. I even managed to do what about 99% of homebrewers who seek to imitate Oberon do and decided to call it Fauxberon.
A couple of friends decided to join me, and we got together yesterday to make the Oberon. It was quite the adventure.
I’m used to doing full-grain brews with the mash tun and the cracked grain and the thermometers. This was a lean operation, though, so we did away with the mash tun. And the thermometer. And the wort chiller. I borrowed my friend’s burner and swiped the propane tank from my parent’s grill and headed over with some Gingerbread Joe to sit in the snow in 25-degree weather while we made a smaller 2.5 gallon batch of beer. Instead of mashing in a traditional mash tun, we poured the grain into a special sock and steeped it at what we assume was 150 degrees for about a half an hour, then boiled for about 60 minutes with various hop additions.
The resulting wort (at double density) tasted pretty good.
As we didn’t have a wort chiller to get it down to temperature quickly, we racked the beer into the primary fermenter and let it cool overnight. Not sure what the original gravity is; last night when the wort was still pretty warm (and at double-strength) it was around 1.110. It will probably be ready for bottling by the end of February, and should have enough time to condition in growlers and bottles before Oberon Day on March 26.
Ultimately, I’m not too concerned about the beer turning out. As one of my much more experienced brewer friends likes to say: “Relax. It’s just beer.”
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