NY Pilsner, Pre Brew Day

A buddy and I went for a bike ride last weekend and ended up at a biker bar/restaurant where we enjoyed a couple beverages and some burgers. It was a hot and humid day so I was thrilled to see a Pilsner on tap from the local Steuben Brewery. I never had this beer and I quickly ordered it up.

There could not have been a more refreshing beer at that point in time. The beer was crisp but with a full body and light hoppiness that complimented it perfectly. The beer was called NY Pils and I didn't even try another beer after having this one it was so good.

So the next day I went to the breweries website where they had the grain and hops used (all from NY, cool). Bingo! I'm making a clone (even though I can just grab a growler anytime it's not the same as having it on tap!).

I had to guess at quantities and adjuncts after some quick historical pilsner research (byo.com, seriouseats.com, www.homebrewersassociation.org) this is what I came up with

The basis for a good pilsner seems to be these few items.

1. Use soft water, this will give the beer a round soft hoppiness. RO is near a perfect match for historical Pilsen water but many people seem to use a mix of RO/Distilled with tap water, meh.
2. Use Pilsen malt for the grainy taste and almost nothing else.
3. Decoction mash for the full body.

I did read an article in BYO that stated to use acid malt which makes sense to bring the pH in range since there are no crystal or other dark malts to bring the pH down. After reading this I looked at all AHA recipes for the style (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipes/?style=pilsner) and saw that maybe a quarter did use acid malt in the grain bill. With my experience with mashing I think this is a good idea.

It's hot and humid in NY right now plus I have 8 gallons of sour to bottle and another 10 gallons of ESB to keg so I'm skipping the decoction, it just takes up too much time. To try and make up the difference I've included 5% melanoidin in the grain bill and I'm mashing at a very high 161F.

So this is what I'm looking at:

View on Brewtoad.com

11 Gallon Batch, 1.047 OG

90% Pilsen Malt

05% Acid Malt

05% Melanoidin Malt

1oz Cascade @ 60

3oz Cascade @20

2oz Cascade @ 5

2oz Cascade @ 0

Mash In @ 148 for 10 min then raise to 161 for 40 min.

Cool to 50F, pitch yeast and use Fast Lagering to ferment the beer.

I've done my homework and designed my recipe. Time to clone, wish me luck!

British Bitter 2

It was only a few months ago I brewed my first British Bitter. It was an ESB that turned our very balanced or even slightly toward the malty side. It was still a very drinkable beer just not to style. It lacked any real stand out qualities, it wasn't even as sessionable as it should have been at 6%.

This time around I decided to go to the other end of the spectrum and brew an Ordinary Bitter. This should be the perfect beer for sipping all day long on hot, muggy summer days. Here are the BJCP guidelines for an Ordinary Bitter BJCP 2015 Ordinary Bitter.

I buy my grains in bulk because I live so far from the nearest LHBS and I didn't want to make a trip to buy Marris Otter so instead I used a 75% / 25% blend of Pilsen and Munich malt which should give some nice bread and biscuit malt qualities to the beer. I also pitched in a pound of aromatic and flaked rye to gain some aroma and maybe a twist of spiciness to the beer. Mostly I just had some flaked rye to use up before the Western NY summer humidity made it unusable.

I used mostly late addition Willamette hops to get a fruity hop flavor and aroma with a small .25 oz warrior charge for bittering in an 11 gallon batch.

I like my dry yeast whenever possible because it means I don't have worry about starters on a busy weeknight. Safale S-04 was the yeast of choice to ferment this beer.

It was a pretty typical brew day except it had been nearly two months since I last brewed so I was a little rusty and it showed during prep and lautering. I also forgot to add potassium sorbate to my sparge water so hopefully chlorine/chloramines don't make this beer too astringent. In my experience the mash is the most important place to have perfect water and I think I nailed that. If you have any experience with these types of fuck-ups please comment.

Recipe: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/better-bitter-596472

• Mashed at 155 for 60 minutes in 5 gallons of tap water.
• Batch Sparged in two portions with 10.8 gallons of  175F water.
• boiled for 60 minutes
• Cooled with immersion chiller, took about 15-18 minutes. Ground water temp makes a huge difference!
• O.G. 1.033

Shorty Kegs make a perfect height stand for bucket transfer!

Ended up with 10.5 gallons of wort at the end.

Fermentation at 65F for 12 hours then 68 until FG is reached.

Berliner Weiss (Kettle Soured)

I tried my hand at another Berliner Weiss about a month ago after the first attempt went horribly wrong. The first batch was a Sour Mash and ended up being infected by Butyric Acid because I had forgotten to lower the pH below 4.5 before inoculation with lactobacillus. This is a crucial step you don't want to forget unless you like the smell and taste of vomit/baby diaper.

So I learned that lesson the hard way. This time around I went with Kettle Souring just to give both methods a try. I started by designing my recipe which wasn't difficult given how simple a Berliner Weiss is.

If anyone is interested you can have a look here: https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/k-berliner

I brewed the beer like any other up until time to boil. Then I let the wort cool to 115 degrees when I used phosphoric acid to lower the pH to 4.4 then dropped in .75 lbs of un-crushed Pilsen malt. I popped the lid on, wrapped a plant heat mat plugged into a temp controller around the kettle then a heavy blanket around that. I checked the taste and pH after 12 hours 24, 30 and 38 hours. I was aiming for a pH of 3.4 but when I woke up in the morning the wort had dropped to 3.2. I boiled it immediately, hopped, cooled and transferred to the fermentor.

I spent the next 3 days struggling to get a standard yeast to ferment the beer out. I tried US-05, London ale and Kolsh yeast all of which fermented a few points then died out. Finally I hopped onto the Milk the Funk facebook page and it was suggested I use Brett. All I had was Trois Vrai so I tossed that in and tada! Two days later we were at a 1.004 F.G.

 After all that yeast drama I was worried how the beer was going to turn out but as it turns out it was great! I ended up taking this beer to Homebrew Con 2016 and serving it on Club Night. What a blast! I had a ton of great feedback on it and only brought home about 1/2 gallon from a 5 gallon keg.

I purchased Raspberry and Boysenberry fruit syrups to serve with this beer. Both jars were about half gone at the end of the night. This was my first tasting of a Berliner with syrup and I was surprised at how much they cut the acidity. In fact it was nearly unnoticeable after adding the tiniest amount of syrup. Although I liked the experience I think I'll be drinking my Berliners straight.

Berliner Weiss Tasting Notes

Appearance - A very hazy yellow to yellow brown color. A light bright white head that sticks around a long time then leaves it's mark on the glass. 

Berliner Weiss - Sorry for the picture quality

Aroma - Lemon grass / lemony aroma. Also get some biscuity malt aroma.

Mouthfeel - Very dry and thin. Not in a bad way for the style because the tartness is what's left on your tongue.

Taste - Amazing! Biscuit grainy character,  some wheat, lemon citrus and a lot of tart sourness. This beer change rather quickly going from almost unbearably sour to rounded and perfectly tart.

Future Changes - I'm not changing a thing. This beer turned out better than I could have expected. I'll just start by fermenting with Trois Vrai form now on!