Anyone Have Proven Czech / Bohemian Pilsner Recipe?

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Just a tad more detail [EDIT: So much for that plan!] for you Scott...

Yep, the BIABacus will lower all the different malt weights when you lower the gravity. A couple of programs, on scaling a recipe, alter individual grains based on their colour value. There are is an argument for that but it is very questionable and I have seen no research on it at all. For example, you asked a great question about foaming and carapils. Even if you used one of those programs, it would still reduce your Carapils by the same amount as your pilsner malt as they are both the same colour.

Cara-pils (dextrine) is probably the only malt I can readily think of that might warrant individual scaling* but....

I think the safest answer to your very good question on the carapils, "Cara-pils is used for foaming so should I keep that amount the same because I am making the same amount of beer?", is to reduce it. Firstly, carapile (dextrine) from one maltster is not the same as dextrine from another. It can contribute flavour, body and head retention. Malt flavours are complicated things and I certainly don't know anywhere enough about their interactions but here is what I mean...

Imagine someone gave you a drink... In one glass of iced water, you have two teaspoons of sugar, two teaspoons of lemon juice and 2 drops of tabasco sauce. Imagine if you tasted it and thought it was too 'strong'. The only thing I can measure in that drink is specific gravity. Imagine if I then made your next drink with 1 teaspoon of sugar but still used 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and 2 drops of tabasco sauce? Now you would probably find it too bitter and hot. If I had instead put only one of everything in your glass,you might find it just right.

Until you can identify an individual flavour or quality as being too strong or weak, you are really playing with fire scaling individual malts differently.

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In relation to this, comes your next good question on the bitterness (quantity of hops) you should use if you do lower the recommended gravity of a recipe. In this case, just let the BIABacus do as it does. You'll see a slight change in the hops required but very little. The next section will explain.

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Making it all balance....

Okay so we have a reduced grain bill. What happens here is the beer will become thinner. A very easy way to correct for this, depending on how much you have dropped your grain bill is to increase your mash temperature. I would guess that for every ABV% you lower your original recipe, then you would want to increase your mash temperature by 2.0 degrees Celsius up until a maxiumum of 70 C. So if you had a 5.0% ABV pilsner originally mashed at 63 C and you wanted to make it a 3.0% ABV beer, then you would mash it at 67 C.

This means your wort will attenuate less (have more body) but it will also be sweeter. This is the reason why we leave the hop bill the same as the original beer. The bitterness from the hops, balances the extra sweetness.

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These are just guidelines though. There are no hard and fast rules/mathematics for altering recipes. For example, *you could leave your cara-pils as per the original recipe and see what happens. I think though that the above is the safest approach I know of at this stage.

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As for your yeast at that temp, just make sure you do a diacetyl rest.


PP

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Thanks PP. Info always very helpful.

I had not even considered changing the mash temp to make it a tad thicker... Not a big difference in ABV though (5.3 down to 5.0 ABV), so...might have added 1 degree Celcius to the mash temperature...? Didn't do it this time, so at this point we'll see how it turns out...

Had some questions on this 3rd batch, brewed yesterday. Over evaporation (seemingly) and efficiency issues. Posted questions in the new brewers section. http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3213

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