Recipe All Grain Bi-Winning Pilsener. BIAB

14kg Weyermanns Pilsener malt
145g Saaz @ 90 mins
50g Saaz @ 60 mins
50g Saaz @ 30 mins
To 23.5 IBU

I ended up with 55l of 1.050 wort.

This is my first ever Pils.

I treated the water with CRS and DLS to get the levels just right.
I got the hardness down to about 20ppm CaCO3 and increased the Calcium to about 110 ppm as per instructions elsewhere.

I had to add back 10l of water which I had reduced the hardness of, I didn't bother to add the salts as it was post mash. This was because I was worried about the evaporation and losing too much beer and it being too strong. After the extra addition I go to where I wanted to be.


Hot break, small flecks in the brew.

Rolling boil.

Scum skimmed off the boil

It was then pitched with a large starter of Budwar yeast WLP802, made from three vials pitched on 20l of starter wort. Yeast was allowed to drop out and then the wort poured off the top and just the sludge pitched.

It's in my fridge now at 9c +/-1c

I'll take a reading next week and then see if I need to raise it for a diacetyl rest as my pitching temp was a little high at 19c. I'm expecting about three weeks fermentation at the temps, although it should have lots of yeast so might be faster.

Once I've done the diacetyl rest I'll lager at 0c for three weeks, then see if it needs anymore.
I'm considering doing a mini mash for priming and pitching that once it's started.

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If anyone is wondering about possible batch sizes with voile, show them this

It comes out to about 20kg when wet, so as long as you can pull it, the voile bag will support it.

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Well I had a bit of a disaster and a save of said disaster at the weekend.
My salvaged and thermostat bypassed fridge that I use as a fermentation chamber died.
Luckily it was noticed in a short space of time, so the temperature was still very comfortably a lager fermentation temperature.
What I then did, was to empty our main fridge of shelving, luckily there was not that much stuff in it at the time. And I got my 60l fermenter in there and packed the food back in around it.

My wife was not thrilled, but she understands that it's a pils and it needs the cold
I checked the beer last night while taking a gravity reading and it's tasting very very nice.
It's down now to 1.013-4 so it's almost at terminal gravity. Due to the tastings I've determined that it does not need a diacetyl rest, I think it's because it got almost a litre of WLP802 yeast sludge on it, so there can't have been much growth phase.

The next step will be to prime it with a mini-mash of the same recipe that I will make up, a calculator that I got on a German site I am a member of works out that I need to prime with 4.3l of wort to get to the carbonation that I need. The technique is called "speisen" and is a reinheitsgebot technique to stop you having to add foreign sugars for the priming.
If anyone is interested in this I can give some more information on the technique and provide the calculator, just it's all in German, so being able to read the language would help somewhat.
You also need to recalculate your gravities to degrees plato to plug them into the calcs, but it's not rocket science.

In any case, disaster averted, I have time now to work out how to get myself a new fridge.

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Cool, the speisen technique is a very interesting one and I have to admit it has a great appeal, apart from anything else it'll add back the beer that I'd normally lose to sludge and break material....precious beer.
I went out today and bought myself a second hand chest freezer that will fit the both of my fermenters at the same time. My 40th birthday is to be celebrated this summer so I'm gonna run some intensive brewing and get a lot ready for June/July and throw a big beery party

I think once this lager is done then I'll throw on an two stouts to my last recipe using the Irish Ale yeast, the Guinness drinkers will love it and also do some sort of red ale and another lager. In the end I'll have beer that would cost me about 400-500 to buy for less than 150

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PistolPatch wrote:Great read above. Interesting stuff. Thanks guys

Eoin, has your wife got any sisters?

Hehe, she certainly puts up with a lot of my crap, but likes and understands the importance of beer, she also understands that I waited so long to do a lager properly that she couldn't tell me not to do that when I had gotten it to the stage it was at.

she does have a sister, but she's a pain in the arse and attached.

Interesting point with this ferment was that it has only taken ten days to get to terminal gravity even with it being a lager, I hear of people waiting 2-3 weeks, but I put this speed down to the huge pitch of almost a liter of pure Budwar yeast. Pitch it high and it will attenuate

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PistolPatch wrote: P.S. Ten days of primary ferment is interesting. Not sure if that is a problem???

Tasting would suggest it's not an issue at all, it's hitting all the right spots even though young and cloudy still, but it's already tasting very very good and no off-flavours that I can discern.

I think it's purely the amount and from my reading I understand the symptoms of overpitching are thinness and lack of body....in a lager....I'll live with that if that's the case

Everything I read says pitch a large healthy population of yeast at a lager....I did so. It's actually also attenuated a little lower than I had expected, the best part of a point, but none the less.

Lagers are my fave beers, having lived in Germany so long, so I get you on the subtlety point
A lot of the modern homebrewers just brew hop bombs and have no concept of subtlety and diss the more refined lager....meh to them I say. My tastebuds get jaded very quickly on a session of something very hoppy and I find it hard to get past 4-5 pints of them, but when on a session I like more than 4-5 pints at times

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sigurdur wrote:Great read Eoin!

It's great to learn from your mistakes, especially since I want to brew a pils sometime this year .. thanks!!

I hope it tastes great for you, but just in case it has a bit of banana-estery flavors, I'll get rid of this thing for you .. just ship it my way

It's only very very vague, not much to worry about, after three or four of them I don't think I'd even notice.

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Killer wrote:Apologies for jumping on this thread but I had a question specifically for EoinMag. I notice above you treat your "Dublin" water above (I'm a Dub in Paris) with CRS and DLS. Have you tried Citric acid before with your ales/ lagers ? Or anythig else ? I've checked the Paris water and it's very similar to Dublin in terms of Bicarbonate levels. How do your untreated ales turn out ? I've just done my first BIAB in Paris and the mash pH was way too high. I know it's ideal for stout which I'll do next (My dad worked in the Guinness plant in Dublin) but I'd like to nail down ales first because I miss them having moved here from the UK. I also lived in Sydney for two years but the BIAB managed to completely pass me by ! Incidentally i'm a chemist so I'm quite interested in working on water treatment generally.

Cheers,

Cillian

Hi Cillian,

This was actually my first lager, I've been intimidated by the idea up until now. This is really my first foray as a result into water treatment, previously I have done simple things like adding a spoon of gypsum before the boil but nothing quite so indepth as this time. That said it's simple enough too. All I've done is work out the KH(Karbonat Haerte - Carbonate hardness) and then worked off that as the total alkalinity as I believe the figures are interchangeable for these purposes and then used the calculator on the brupaks website to work out the CRS addition on a sliding scale.
http://www.brupaks.com/water%20treatment.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have also tested the Ca content of the water using another aquarium test kit and then used that figure and the same page from Brupaks to work out the DLS addition, now that is also adding other stuff I maybe don't want so it's a rough water treatment.
If you want to get indepth into it, which as a chemist you might well want to, then there are spreadsheets about for working out salt additions to a very fine degree of accuracy. You would however need to start with distilled water if you really want to do it well and build the whole water profile yourself from scratch, it's a bit tedious for mere mortals however....Braukaiser has a good site on the subject if you google him.
It's definitely necessary for the soft pilsener style beers, but I never noticed an issue with my ales with little or no treatment, that said I am sure my next light ale will be better due to the treatment.
I hope that's of some help, it's possibly a little simplistic for what you need, but I think Braukaiser will allow you to geek out on water treatment if it floats your boat

Eoin

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