This weekend I decided to tackle an old favorite, the pilsner.  Only this time, I wanted to really do one that I wanted, not just one that I thought would fit a style.  This is meant to be a hoppy pilsner, inspired by Mammoth Brewing Company’s Golden Trout Pilsner.  A friend brought me a bomber of this from Cali and I really enjoyed it.  It was a hoppy interpretation of the pilsner style that is listed as a German Pilsner, but I would call it a modern-American Pilsner.  While it didn’t receive a lot of “BA love”, I thought it was a great brew.  They listed it as being made up pilsner and vienna malt with all Noble hops.  Not a lot of really useful information.  So I used the ingredients and went forward.

My brew came out something like this:

• 18.5lbs UK 2-row pilsner
• 3lbs Vienna
• 60 min – 3oz Saaz
• 30min – 1oz Hallertauer, 1oz Tettnag, 1oz Pearle
• Cool down – 2oz Saaz
• Dry hopped – 2oz Saaz whole-leaf

For the actual brew, I decided on a protein rest and a double decoction.  The second decoction was for getting the mash-tun up to mash out temps.  The protein rest was 122f for 35 min followed by a 20min decoction consisting of 4.5 gallons.  When the decoction mash was added back to the mashtun the temp was 155f where it rested for 45mim.  The second decoction was only for 13min and consisted of 2.5 gallons, but still brought the temp up to the desired 168f mash out.

I sparged for about a half hour and at the end, I was a little light in my volume so I topped off with two gallons of water before the boil.  After the boil, I was a little low in my volume, but I was high on the gravity so I topped off with some water to get to my desired 1.044 OG.

The idea here is a simple pilsner with a great hop profile, some tradition with a more modern smack.  Hopefully it comes out.  It might not be in any styles, but it’s going to be cooling me down this summer.

Cheers

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.773378&w=425&h=350&fv=key%3D0f345a78d5]

What better way to celebrate the end of a sub-zero temperature stretch than some early morning cold brewing?  Since we both have some great conditions for lagerning brews, Nick and I decided to revisit our very successful “Samuel L. Jackson” brew that was a slightly stronger version of Sam Adams.  Since we both enjoyed this brew so much the first time, we decided to double the recipe and make it a big batch.  As I have mentioned in the past, volume has been a reoccurring problem in this most recent brewing season.  I thought about it and went to the drawing board for some potential solutions.  I think I have it all figured out though.

First off, the recipe was the same as the original, just doubled.  I also had to make some slight adjustments to the hops and the yeast.  I used a Wyeast Czech Pils instead of the Munich I used the first time and I changed the flavor and aroma hops to all Liberty.  The bittering I changed the hops to Galena so that I could get the alpha acids with using less hops.

So here is the recipe:

42 lbs 2 row US
4.6 lbs Crystal 40L
4.5 lbs Munich
3oz Galana hops (60min)
2oz Liberty hops (30min)
2oz Liberty hops (dry, secondary)

Mashing:
Strike – 16 gallons (1.25qts per lb) at 165 for 153f 60min
Mashout – 5 gallons boiling to bring the temp to 168 – This required us to draw some off because of a loss of head space. We need to make sure that we stay under 52lbs in the future so that we can fit in the volume of water to get up to temp
Sparge – 11 gallons at 170 – batch sparge

This was a total of 32 gallons in volume which put us spot on for the final volume we were looking for. It appears that the problem I was having was that I was not adding in mash tun dead space. I had kind of let is pass in the past because we were using the smaller tun, but with the 20 gallon mash tun it creates a lot of dead space. Below are pictures from my dead space testing I was doing Saturday night. Now I am currently adding in a gallon worth of losses in mash tun dead space.

At the end of the day, we have 10.5 gallons of Samuel L. Jackson each with a OG of 1.052 (.002 below our target, oh well, close enough).  We got some breakfast and had a pretty relaxing brew day.

Brewday Breakfast

For those of you that have not tried a decoct mash, it’s not actually that difficult, it’s simply VERY time consuming. You can add an extra hour on your mashing for every decoction step in your process. A summary of a decoction is taking 1/3 of your grain out of your mash tun after you have doughed in your mash and putting it into a separate pot. The consistency should be pretty think, it reminded me of oatmeal. You get it up to 152f, give it a 20min rest at that temp and raise it up to a boil, boil it for 20 min and return the grain back to the mash tun. Mix in well and watch for hot spots. Pretty simple, right? Well it actually is. It just takes a while. Here is my time line:

Look inside the Decoc Pot

7:30am wake up, start heating 10 gallons of water for 2qt per lb of grain mix
8:30am(ish) dough in grains at 152f strike temp, 144f grain bed
8:45am take out 1/3 of the grains, add to heat get up to 152, rest 20min
9:30am get the decoc grain up to a boil, boil for 20 min
10:00 am add grains back to mash tun, grain bed temp at 152f, let rest 70min (mowed my lawn)
10:40am draw off grains for 2nd decoc, get onto heat and go straight to boil, wait 20 min
11:10am add grains back to the mash tun, get grain bed temp up above 165f for mashout
11:30am mashout, wait for sparge water to heat up
11:45am start sparge…
And so on…

The left shot is the grains in the decoc pot and the right is the non-decoc grains. It’s not easy to see, but the decoc grains got a little darker.

There was a 90min boil to boot. Like I said, this was a very involved beer (did I say that?). In the end it would up being a lot more quantity than I planned, and the OG was not exactly what I wanted either. It was 1.052 before the boil and finished at 1.061. I am not good at checking quantity on my keg kettle, I could have used some more boil, but I am not sure I could have handled another minute of this brew day.

I got the idea to try a doppelbock after reading a great article on it in BYO and they indicated how difficult and time consuming this beer was if brewed in a traditional fashion. I have to agree. However, it was a great experience and I am a fan of the decoction. However, I am not sure there enough days left in my life to make a habit of it.

The other new things about the brew is that I reused my Bohemian yeast from my Oktoberfest. I basically just racked my Oktoberfest to the secondary and left the stuff at the bottom of the bucket. I added my wort and walla! The good news is that it is already bubbling, so I know it worked.

One last note- regarding my comment on the last post about being the smartest man alive; not in fact true. Come to find out my shower head sparge arm sucked ass. Back to the drawing board.

The second shot here is from the boiling. I made all of my hop additions on the right time and used my grain screen for the hopps. However, there was a little bit of an issue with it this time because it seemed to hold water. This made me a little concerned because if water was not getting in, hops may not have been getting out.

My pre-boil OG was 1.042 qnd my final OG was 1.050. This is way low for my target, but I am not blaiming Beer Smith (yet) because I gave myself a 70% brewhouse effeciency (why I do not know) which would explain coming that short on my gravity reading.

I maintained a heavy boil for 90min and yeilded just shy of 5 gallons. I boiled off only .08 G though. I am not sure what that means.

This is my brewing assistant for the day Meatball. As you can see he is doing what all good homebrew helpers do, check out the neighbors.

After a long brew day, there is only one thing left to do…

Cheers!

So tonight I moved my Schlitz from the garage to the keg and into my stomach. This is my first Lager and next winter I am going to try and get more into these lagers because they are a nice break from the complex flavors of a lot of the Ales that I make. I let this hoss lager for 2 months (new record for me for allowing time to pass without drinking my beer).

Anyway, one of the most gratifying things about this beer is that the first taste rushed me back to my days at the frat house pounding cheep brews out of funnels. The smell was woven into my senses as the first thing I caught a whiff of in the morning. Feet sticking to the floor, digging my books out of a pile of empty beer cups, the great wall of empty kegs…those were the days.

Now I am sure you are reading this wondering “why the hell would you brew something that reminds you of college beer?” and I too asked myself the same question. To be honest, I am not sure, but it’s really rewarding to know I can make decent schwag beer.

So here is the official review:

Aroma: This has a sweet malt smell with a distinct maze nose that was the part of the beer smell that reminds me of Natty Light.

Color: I don’t have a SRM chart, but I would say it’s in the 20-30 SRM range. Its a light gold color that should be more clear than it is (I forgot the Irish Moss).

Taste: Well it’s an American Pilsner, what more can I say? This is a distinct corn/maze flavor with sweet malt overtone. There is little to no hop bitterness that jumps out at you, but there is a dry finish that I think is the hops that was in it.

Mouth feel: Light for this style, but I think my kegerator needs to get it’s self back on track!

Drinkability: Well it’s an American Pils, at about 5% ABV and very light body there is not much to worry about here.

OVERALL: Meh, it’s still better than Bud!

90 min at 150F (65C)
4.0 lbs (1,800g) 2 row pale malt
2lbs 10oz (1,200 g) 6 row pale malt
2lbs (907g) flaked maze

.55oz (15g) Czech Saaz 3.8% alpha (60min)
1.1oz (31g) Fuggles (60min)

Wyeast 2035 (American Lager)

OG- 1.030
FG- 1.005

I used about 7 gallons of water, 2 gallons for the wart and another 5 for the sparge. After the boil down, I had the right amount. This was my first time using a starter and I think it helped out, though I am not sure about the smell I am getting from the fermenter. There is a sulfur smell coming out that I get a little bit of, so if there is anyone out there that know anything about that, please feel free to add some input. I am a little afraid that I may have my first infected batch (knock on wood), but I am going to wait and see if it’s not something with the lager yeast that I may not know about.

Otherwise the whole process went well.