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Your best Pilsner recipe (Partial or BIAB)


Jay

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Hiya all...

 

as always I'm on the quest for a great Pilsner recipe.

 

Does anyone have one that they're really happy with that they would like to post?

 

German or Czech style.

 

Cheers all Jay

 

oh and just quickly I have a Pilsner in secondary and am a tad worried that the litre or so of headspace I couldn't dispel in the cube may oxidise my beer. Is this likely?

 

cheers Jay

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You could search some recent threads for words like:

Pilsner or Bohemian or Czech

 

Yeh I was looking at Kelsey's which looks marvellous, but it'd be nice to have a few others maybe a tad less advanced on the water side of things.

 

cheers Jay

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True.

 

Now you've got me thinking...hmmmm the water really is important though isn't it... hmmmm

I've been doing half distilled water, half Sydney tap water. No idea if that's in the ballpark for a Pilsner.

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OK. A very simple but outstandingly nice German Pilsner. Please note: I just scaled it down to a BIAB from my normal system, so you'll need to round out the figures to sensible amounts.

 

Recipe: PVP

Style: German Pilsner (Pils)

TYPE: All Grain

 

Recipe Specifications

--------------------------

Boil Size: 35.16 l

Post Boil Volume: 30.16 l

Batch Size (fermenter): 25.00 l

Bottling Volume: 23.00 l

Estimated OG: 1.049 SG

Estimated Color: 6.2 EBC

Estimated IBU: 28.3 IBUs

Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %

Est Mash Efficiency: 83.5 %

Boil Time: 90 Minutes

 

Ingredients:

------------

Amt Name %/IBU

5.03 kg Pilsner (Weyermann) (3.3 EBC) 91.8 %

0.18 kg Acidulated (Weyermann) (3.5 EBC) 3.2 %

0.18 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) 3.2 %

0.09 kg Carahell (25.0 EBC) 1.7 %

60.12 g Spalt Spalter [3.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min 20.0 IBUs

36.07 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [2.90 %] @15 min 4.9 IBUs

24.05 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [2.90 %] @10 min 2.4 IBUs

18.04 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [2.90 %] @5 min 1.0 IBUs

 

 

Mash Schedule: BIAB, Light Body

Total Grain Weight: 5.47 kg

----------------------------

Name Description Step Temperature Step Time

Saccharification Add 41.01 l of water at 67.9 C 64.4 C 90 min

Mash Out Heat to 75.6 C over 7 min 75.6 C 10 min

 

 

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It's funny you mention all the water treatment stuff - last brew day I brewed that Bo pils recipe with untreated tap water, as an experiment. It's heading into the FV after this current lot is kegged. My water treatment basically consisted of distilling all the water for the batch and adding minerals back in with brewing salts to mimic Pilsen water, using calculations provided by Beersmith's water profiling tool. I am gonna get some acid malt from CB when I go down there to get the kegerator though and try that in a batch too.

 

I'm still trying to perfect my recipe but I at least have a good starting base to work off. The one currently bottled I'm not overly happy with (yet anyway, it's still early days) but that was the one that had the catastrophe of a step mash that turned into a pseudo decoction cum single infusion. I wouldn't be surprised if that has something to do with it turning out not as I had hoped. Although in saying that the FG samples of it were brilliant, so maybe it just needs more time in the bottles. unsure

 

 

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  • 5 months later...
OK. A very simple but outstandingly nice German Pilsner. Please note: I just scaled it down to a BIAB from my normal system' date=' so you'll need to round out the figures to sensible amounts.

 

Recipe: PVP

Style: German Pilsner (Pils)

TYPE: All Grain

 

Recipe Specifications

--------------------------

Boil Size: 35.16 l

Post Boil Volume: 30.16 l

Batch Size (fermenter): 25.00 l

Bottling Volume: 23.00 l

Estimated OG: 1.049 SG

Estimated Color: 6.2 EBC

Estimated IBU: 28.3 IBUs

Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %

Est Mash Efficiency: 83.5 %

Boil Time: 90 Minutes

 

Ingredients:

------------

Amt Name %/IBU

5.03 kg Pilsner (Weyermann) (3.3 EBC) 91.8 %

0.18 kg Acidulated (Weyermann) (3.5 EBC) 3.2 %

0.18 kg Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC) 3.2 %

0.09 kg Carahell (25.0 EBC) 1.7 %

60.12 g Spalt Spalter [3.50 %'] - Boil 60.0 min 20.0 IBUs

36.07 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [2.90 %] @15 min 4.9 IBUs

24.05 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [2.90 %] @10 min 2.4 IBUs

18.04 g Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [2.90 %] @5 min 1.0 IBUs

 

 

Mash Schedule: BIAB, Light Body

Total Grain Weight: 5.47 kg

----------------------------

Name Description Step Temperature Step Time

Saccharification Add 41.01 l of water at 67.9 C 64.4 C 90 min

Mash Out Heat to 75.6 C over 7 min 75.6 C 10 min

 

 

Hey Phil (Is it Phil?)

I'm looking at having a crack at your recipe.

 

What yeast are you using here please?

 

cheers Jay

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I am simply shooting in the dark here Jay but I seem to recall Phil talking about using Wy2000 Budvar yeast on his pilsners. unsure Maybe a German lager strain would work too.

 

That batch I brewed with the tap water untreated came out ok, but not as good as the ones done with the treated water. I'll be sticking with the treated water for all pilsner batches.

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I've been struggling to get a good hop aroma since I've been on the Pilsner quest.

 

Another couple of questions based on Phil's recipe:

 

I've put this recipe into my recipe builder and it results in about 54 IBU's as opposed to the 28ish in your recipe. Not sure why?

 

And I've noticed Spalt Spalter is an aroma hop, so wondering why you're using it as a bittering hop?

 

And is it ok to substitute Hallertau Mittelfruch (in slightly bigger amounts) for this. So I can just buy 1 x 90g pack of hops? or is the Spalt an important part of your recipe?

 

big thanks in advance

 

Jay

 

 

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I've been struggling to get a good hop aroma since I've been on the Pilsner quest.

 

Another couple of questions based on Phil's recipe:

 

I've put this recipe into my recipe builder and it results in about 54 IBU's as opposed to the 28ish in your recipe. Not sure why?

 

And I've noticed Spalt Spalter is an aroma hop, so wondering why you're using it as a bittering hop?

 

And is it ok to substitute Hallertau Mittelfruch (in slightly bigger amounts) for this. So I can just buy 1 x 90g pack of hops? or is the Spalt an important part of your recipe?

 

big thanks in advance

 

Jay

 

 

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I am simply shooting in the dark here Jay but I seem to recall Phil talking about using Wy2000 Budvar yeast on his pilsners. unsure Maybe a German lager strain would work too.

 

That batch I brewed with the tap water untreated came out ok' date=' but not as good as the ones done with the treated water. I'll be sticking with the treated water for all pilsner batches. [/quote']

 

Cheers Kelsey, Budvar sounds nice.

Interesting result on the water.

Do you mind giving me your water profile, how to etc? Never done this before.

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I think these types of beers turn out better when you use noble or noble type hops all the way through the boil, rather than bittering with a high AA% hop. This and authenticity are the reasons I use Saaz all through the boil in my recipe.

 

As for the water, I simply distill about 40 litres, then fill up my urn to 36 litres and add the brewing salts. They're tiny amounts though, fractions of a gram, the most being 0.5g of MgSO4 (epsom salts). The others are Calcium Chloride, Baking Soda and Chalk (CaCO3). Those three are 0.4g each, although they are more specific when I actually input the water profile into the recipe itself, something like 0.51g, 0.36g etc.

 

 

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Wow that must take a fair amount of energy distilling 40L.

 

So averaging them out a tad, if you were to add 0.4g of all of those. That would pretty much get the right profile?

 

Thinking as I'm writing this, I'm not sure why I'm asking about averaging them out, there's no point, I guess you just need some kind of high quality scales?

 

cheers Jay

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Yeah, it'd get close. It doesn't need to be bang on exactly the same, but certainly the tap water left untreated seems to be too hard to get a really nice pilsner, in AG at least. I'd imagine it does take a bit to distill it like that, but it's either that or buy the water which is probably way more expensive by comparison. I don't brew them terribly often though, maybe once every 3 brews (though doing none for a while in order to build a stockpile of kegs).

 

The scales I use for measuring these additions are jewellery scales that I got off eBay. They measure to 0.001 of a gram, but weren't terribly expensive actually.

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