This beer was an experiment in which I tried a lot of new techniques that I generally don't use in my brewing process. The motivation was that I was not quite happy with the aroma and finish of my beers. For the
lagers, in which I use only bittering hops or only little amounts of
flavoring hops, I didn't get much aroma from the beer. I feel that it is
rather empty compared to a commercial Helles or Maerzen. And the finish
still felt a little to harsh. And there is a pesky slight dustiness
that I'm occasionally getting from my beers.

So I gave a Helles a try and made sure that I pay
attention to all the details that I know could make a difference and
which I could take care of w/o bying new equipment:

• use a heated step infusion mash with a 57 C (137 F) dough in and a 2
  step saccrification rest. 63 C Maltose rest and then an extended (60 min) rest at 70 C, which is said to be beneficial for body and head retention. This is pretty much as authentic German as it
  gets and this would be a first for me since it doesn't really fit my
  brew-house. But I can make it work.
• when batch sparging don't drain the wort below grain level. This is basically in response to the BYO article about sparging
• fix the manifold seal for my MLT. Recently I started pulling in air through this.
• add hops before the hot break and maybe even FWH the batch. Hopefully this smoothens out the finish
• 90 min boil
• DMS rest. When I have an imported Helles it generally has a tad of a
  sweet aroma. It doesn't smell like the typical DMS aroma to me, but I
  could imagine that it is DMS which is barely at the aroma threshold. So
  far I have been chilling my beers below 100 within 10 – 20 min. No
  Commercial brewery that has a whirlpool can do that and I want to know
  if this is the reason why my beers have such a clean (=empty) aroma.
  I'll have to read up on average time that commercial wort is spending
  hot.
• 12+ hr post chill whirlpool settling. For that I will chill the wort
  to ~48F and keep it in an ice bath for the next 12 hrs before racking
  to the fermenter. This is supposed to get rid of about 60% of the cold
  break. Commercial brewies may have settling tanks for this. And since I
  don't have a conical I have to go this route.

These were a lot of changes, but If the beer really comes out different (and
hopefully better) I could start eliminating one extra step after
another to figure out what is actually important.

Here is the result:

The first surprise was, that there is great hop flavor and aroma even though all the hops were added before the start of the boil. First wort hopping does work! But the hop utilization was better than expected, so it became more of a Pilsner than a Helles.

I can't detect any DMS in the beer. The DMS rest didn't work, but I found that aged beer may develop a sweet aroma. It's likely that I'm getting this when having a German beer here in the US. Besides this, I had a Spaten Maibock on tap a few days back and its aroma was very similar to my lagers. I seem to be on the right track.

The step mash didn't make a dramatic difference since I cannot taste a difference that I would contribute to that. It may take a side-by side to verify this. But the head retention is good. Difficult to tell if his is a result of the long rest at 70 C.

I used the Bavarian lager (WY2206) for this, since this was the only yeast I had on hand at the time and had to push it hard (i.e. warm maturation rest) to get close to the limit of attenuation. But it didn't want to and stalled 0.5 Plato shy of it:

original extract: 12.0 Plato

limit of attenuation: 82% (fast ferment test AE=2.2 Plato)

beer attenuation: 77% (beer AE=2.7 Plato)

The target for the aparent extract of the beer was 2.5 Plato, and as a result of actually being higher than that the beer is a little sweeter than I'd like it to be. But I know to fix this with a different yeast next time.

I didn't see any benefit of the more complete trub removal. According to some studies and other home brewer's experiments, its importance seems overstated anyway.

The pesky "dusty" taste still exists. But since it only happens when I drink the beer that stood in the beer line for a day, I suspect it is staling in the beer line.