Looks like a solid recipe! I'll be brewing this up Wednesday night along with a Vienna lager. I also wouldn't mind help putting together a nice Czech pils recipe. Sounds like you know what you're doing!
Great! I'm glad it turned out well for you. I've never had RR Pils before, but I buy every single American made Pilsner I see and always compare it mine. Of course I'm biased, but myself, friends, and brew club members always prefer mine. There are, however, some German made Pilsners that I prefer over mine.So I've had this in the kegerator for a little over 2 months now, and it is phenomenal! I'm having a hard time deciding whether I like Russian Rivers STS Pils more or this (which is saying a lot)
I used to buy undermodified floor malted continental Pils malt and used that for my German Pilsners, Czech Pilsners, Kölsch, Helles, etc. It was very good. I can't say it was better without sampling it side by side with recipes using fully modified Pils malts, though.I'm thinking of doing it again soon, but I've got a question….do you think this would benefit at all from a floor malted Pilsner with just a basic step mash? And if so, what mash schedule would you go with?
You're welcome! It's good to see another fan of the simple, yet extraordinary, light lagers/hybrids! I just put my latest batch of this Ger Pils on tap yesterday - always good to have something like this on tap!Thanks for all the great Pils/Lager recipes you've posted, I'm quickly going through them all!
Cheers!
So I am lagering this beer now. I took my final gravity reading and ended up with a much bigger beer than I had planned.
I usually do a single infusion mash, but I followed the step mash in the recipe and ended up with much better efficiency than usual. Since I had better efficiency, I ended up with a 1.061 OG and a 1.008 FG, which means a 6.9% beer. Guess it's an imperial pils now...so much for sticking to the recipe!
I don't check pre-boil gravity because I don't know how it should compare to my desired OG.
In addition to step mashing, paying attention to mash pH, a nice long slow sparge, proper malt crush, and relatively thick mash thickness can help increase your efficiency. There are lots of threads on HBT to help you with efficiency issues, too.I have a pretty consistently terrible brewhouse efficiency (58-60%) so I bump up the grain bill to account for that.
I have been trying to improve my efficiency, and clearly the step mash is more effective than other things I have tried. I will probably use it more often!
I think mash pH may have been a problem as well. I was talking to a local Brewer who uses our same water source and he mentioned a need for pH adjustment because our water has a high pH. I started with distilled for this brew because of the style, so that may have also been a factor.
Tiber, I brewed this beer about 3 weeks ago. Was the first time that I attempted to correct my water and used the profile that I asked for your feedback on. I just cracked the keg last night and I was BLOWN AWAY. The beer has a lovely balance of hop and malt but a nice hop nose. This i the best beer I have made thus far and thank you very much for the recipe. This will always be in my house.
Im considering using either Spring or RO water for this one. What additions do you use for RO?
The amount of salt additions will depend on the volume of water being treated. You can use any one of the various free water calculators to help you reach the water profile that I suggest in the original recipe on page 1. This water calculator from Brewer's Friend is pretty easy to use, and a good place to start. Simply enter the volume of water you wish to treat, then enter your target ion levels. From there you can change the amounts of different salts to add to your water to reach the desired profile.
Planning on brewing in a couple weeks. What would be an alternate bittering hop? Would magnum be a good choice?
So I've just polished off the last bottle of this batch. I have to say, I really really liked it and it was a great first venture into lager brewing. If I were to brew again, I think I would add the melanoidin malt though. The finished beer was incredibly crisp and clean but I felt it needed just a touch more sweetness and colour. I definitely think it would benefit from kegging too over bottle conditioning as the carbonation was important in the final impression (I managed to get it right thankfully).
OP, did you use 1 pack of yeast or two with the 1gal starter?
A pound of melanoidin? That's quite a bit! I don't use any melanoidin for German Pils anymore, but it can fit for a Czech Pils. Speaking of, you used Czech Pils yeast for this, so what you'll have is an imperial Czech Pils of sorts. Regardless, let us know what you think when it's finished!First time brewing a lager! I stumbled upon this thread and it seemed to be the most straight forward for a first timer so I gave it a shot. I use Brewer's Friend for all of my recipes so I dropped this into my recipe builder and for 11 Gallons it called for 20lbs of Pilsner malt and I also ended up adding in 1lb of Melanoidin. I also used WLP800 for my yeast and stepped up one pack for 24hrs and just pitch another pack after brewing to get my cell count up. All went well but my efficiency was way high I assume because of the 90 min mash and my boil off increased too, probably because it was way warmer than the last time I brewed... Anyway I ended up with about 10 Gal of Imperial Pilsner sitting right around 7.2%. My sample from the other day was very tasty and I'm only less than 2 weeks in! Stepping up the temp now to 66 for the diacetyl rest for the next two weeks. Can't wait to get this baby in kegs! Cheers and thanks for the recipe!
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