[quote=“dmtaylo2”]The same thing happened to me on my last Vienna lager. It scored upper 30s in competition and tasted fantastic, but a little watery, and both myself and the judges noticed the same thing. On mine I attributed this to my extremely high efficiency. My efficiency on that particular batch was 94%. If memory serves, the original gravity was WAY too high, so I added several quarts of water to the fermenter to bring it back down into the 1.050s. So there really might be a disadvantage to high efficiency, that was my conclusion. FG=1.011.
However, if you did not experience high efficiency, then perhaps I cannot make the same conclusion, and might even need to modify my own conclusion. Maybe we really need to mash hotter, and perhaps add some Carapils to get the body up to where we expect!?!? I am usually not an advocate for Carapils, but I wonder if there are some real advantages. Caravienne and Caramunich might be appropriate as well.
My batch was mashed at an average of 154 F for the sacc rest, however it was also double decocted so I think I had it in the 140s for a while as well. Maybe I really should have skipped the lower rest altogether and stuck with a single rest at 156 F or something like that.
And maybe all this is just an American expectation of body in the beers. Maybe we’re all wrong and the Europeans and Mexicans know best. Maybe these beers are supposed to have a somewhat watery body, and Americans just don’t like it that way!? Or maybe we’ve all been brainwashed by Negra Modelo into thinking that Vienna lagers are supposed to be thick and caramelly when they’re really not.
In future, I think I’ll mash higher at 156 F, single infusion, for a shorter time (30-35 minutes), consider adding a few percent Cara-something, and other than that keep the recipe all the same, and see where it ends up.
I used a big pitch of Wyeast 2206 in mine by the way. Fantastic yeast that I would not change, it’s really the best. Except maybe for W-34/70, I might try that sometime. But for guaranteed awesome results, there’s really nothing better than 2206 IMHO.
What’s the details for your recipe, matt?[/quote]
taking a high gravity wort and adding water because you got “extremly high efficiency” ios not going to make a beer watery