West of Eden Pilsener

It's winter again so time to dive into Lager brewing! This time I'm really going over the top with my ingredients, using only pure Salzgitter Pilsener malt, and a mixture of German and Czech hops. For yeast, I got my hands on the original Pilsener Urquell yeast! Lots of anticipations! My workshop sits at about 6-8C so these are exactly right conditions for a Pilsener. I ended up 2 weeks on the primary fermenter and 3 weeks on the secondary. Ideally you want to lager a little longer but I was running out of my previous brew :-)

BREW DATE: 12/13/2015

BOTTLING DATE: 01/17/2016

Went all in with 100% Pilsener Malt!

GRAIN BILL: 12lbs total

-12lbs German Salzgitter Pilsener Malt. Noticed they crushed it a lot with plenty of grist. 

MASH-IN: 1 hr at 158F, no mash-out. Fly sparged with 175F water. The sparge got almost stuck and it took forever to lauter. I kind of gave up when the gravity reached 10 brix, running out of time and all. Usually, I would keep lautering until 7brix but I figured I had enough gravity on account of 12lbs of malt. Doing the calculation it looks kind of low alcohol, though. One thing I noted is that the extrapolation always ends up on the low side, so I should be ok. I try not to get OG reading from the final mixture as I'm kind of scared contaminating the beer.

HOP SCHEDULE:

-60min 1oz German Hallertau leaf hops

-30min 1oz German Hallertau leaf hops

-10min 1oz Czech Saaz pellet hops

OG: 20.8 brix for 9l wort filled up to 23l => alcohol content should come out at 4.4%.

YEAST: Wyeast Pilsener Urquell 2001. 1 day to kick off fermentation at about 20C, then into the workshop at 6-8C.

TASTE NOTES: This is a really nice and mellow beer. Like it very much, fruity aromas, light head, beautiful color, a hint of sweetness. However it is (again!) not a Pilsener, really more like a Steam beer, like Anchor Steam. This yeast doesn't seem to settle well, so you won't get the clear color usually found in Pilseners. Somewhat hazy, unfiltered look, but doesn't seem to affect taste negatively. I probably didn't have cool enough temperatures in my workshop. The temperature during the day probably went up to 12C, maybe that is already too much. 

West of Eden Pilsener!