![]() ![]() You can ramp temperature up a few degrees after about a week, but only do so if you can maintain a steady temperature. You won’t have much risk of diacetyl formation with this yeast, and low-and-slow will get the job done if you give it enough time. Start fermenting cool (50☏/10☌) and stay there. You can help that nice, dry flavor along by ensuring a maxed-out attenuation. If you aren’t happy with the result (it tastes flabby or dull), increase it very slightly in subsequent batches until you get a crisp, almost flinty, finish. Add a quarter-teaspoon to the mash, then proceed as usual. If you have soft water, you’ll want to add sulfates to your water, and luckily, we have just the tool: gypsum. ![]() Since I’m telling you that you might need to mess with your water, I suppose I owe it to you to give you some guidance on that. The Bohemian Lager will more than get the job done. If you can get it, though, Wyeast 2247 (European Lager) takes the cake, finishing bone dry and clean! Basically, you want to avoid anything that leaves a heavier, rounder, maltier finish. Lots of books will tell you Bavarian Lager, but I much prefer Bohemian Lager (Wyeast 2124). You’ll have a clean bitter flavor and some noticeable floral-herbal hops flavor to go with it.įinally, use a nice, high-attenuation lager yeast for fermentation. Get yourself 35-ish IBUs from a 60-minute addition of any hops (high-alpha acid, low-cohumulone are best), and then add half an ounce (14 g) of Hallertau at 10 minutes and an additional half-ounce (14 g) at flameout or in the whirlpool. Hopping is also pretty simple (as promised) and more restrained than you might think, given Pilsners’ reputation for being hoppier lagers. This simple grist gives just a touch of grainy background with some mild toasty notes from the Victory. I used to make this beer with Maris, but I’ve since been talked around on the slight sweetness of Pils malt to accent the bittering and make it more drinkable, and I have to admit that it does work a tiny bit better. Your grist: 9 pounds (4.1 kg) of Pilsner malt and 4 oz (113 g) of Victory. Your local homebrew shop is going to love me this week. In fact, I’m going to go make one as soon as I’m done writing this. It can make some of my paler, more hoppy beers a little too sharp, but it’s damned near perfect for German Pils. I land at just under 100ppm for sulfate and 85ppm for chloride. Luckily, my local water has a near-perfect level of sulfates and a nice sulfate-to-chloride ratio, which means bitterness is slightly accentuated. ![]() Great German Pilsners greatly benefit from relatively high sulfate content in their water. There aren’t many times when you hear me bang on about water chemistry, but this is one. So why is the German Pils more bitter overall? Simple: water. If the bittering is too aggressive, you’ll end up with something that’s unpleasant to drink. It should be a pronounced but restrained feature. That’s not to say that you should be trying to make some kind of session IPL bitterness shouldn’t take over the flavor. The German version tends to be less malty and more austere than its older Bohemian cousin, and against that sharper background we get a flavor profile that is a bit more hops-forward. One of the most commonly brewed beer styles in the world, Pilsners can be broken out by region. Not only is this a delightfully simple recipe that produces a crystal-clear look and flavor profile, but it’s a beer I can brew and then ignore in the fermentor for a few weeks. In that spirit, this is the perfect week to talk German Pilsner. It’s in weeks like this that I like to both check off simpler tasks and buy myself some extra time. Mid-May is when things get a little nuts, with graduation nearing and every committee, task force, department, and program wanting to meet one last time before everyone scatters like roaches when the lights come on. I’d never complain about my job-I doubt “professor” will ever be featured on a certain Mike Rowe series-but like any other gig, it has its busy periods and slow periods. ![]()
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