Based on Bohemian Pilsner from "Brewing Classic Styles" Zainasheff and Palmer.
Pils Pils everywhere a pils. Everyone is apparently doing a pilsner, so in order to make it interesting I decided to do something a little more insane just to see if there was any difference.
Ignoring (or perhaps spurning) reality I decided to do a full three decoction mash pilsner. As everyone (except most AHA finalists who apparently don't care about tradition and only want good beer) knows, you need to do a full three stage decoction with undermodified pilsner malt to get a true czech style pils. So thats what I set out to do (with more than a little help from cindy, who was brewing a mead at the same time).
Starter
You have to have a good start, if you get far enough ahead they'll never catch up. Same thing is true with yeast., especially with a low temp fermentation like a pilsner. So the first thing we did was, about a week ahead of time, started up a mini brew to grow some more yeast.
Sun Dec 23
- 0.75 gallons of thin DME wort (20 minute boil, no hops) 1.040 OG
- Pitched one smack pack Wyeast 2278
- Let ferment out for 3 days at 68F
- Not having a stir plate (yet, I'm busy, give it a rest) I opted for the "shake it like hell everytime you think about it" method. This got me about 5X growth (rough measurement from the outside) which is pretty good.
- refrigerated to let settle. This yeast flocculates like you wouldn't believe, that crap was so stuck on the bottom that I had to pry it off with a spoon handle when I was ready to pitch.
Monday Dec 31, let the brewing commence
Ingredients
- 24lbs of Weyermann Pilsner
- 1.5lbs of Dextrin
- 2.0oz 6.0AA Sterling 60 minutes
- 0.25oz 7.8AA Sterling 60 minutes 21 IBU's (combined)
- 2.0oz 6.0AA Mt Hood 30 minutes 15 IBU's (Yeah I know, but sterling are expensive nowdays)
- 2.0oz 7.8AA Sterling 10 minutes 12.3 IBU's
- 1.7oz 7.8AA Sterling 0 minutes 0 IBU's
- Total 47-48 IBU's. Maybe a little high for style (35-45), but then so was my gravity so it should all work out. I'll just call it an export style :)
Actual OG 1.067 This was only 75% efficiency, not crazy for a triple decoction.
I guess I need to trust reputable authors less, they were figuring only 60% efficiency,
now thats crazy!
- Doughed in with 5 gallons of cold water
- 15 minute rest
- added enough 150F water to bring to 95F
- 15 minute rest
- First Decoction
- Pulled 3 gallons (thick 1/3 of mash) to small boil pot
- heated to 144F over 10 minutes
- 15 minute rest
- heated to 167 over 10 minutes
- 10 minute rest
- heated to boil over 12 minutes
- boiled for 30 minutes
- 11 minutes in I catch on fire- fuck fuck OW! (some more swearing and bit of slapping, disaster averted with only minor leg hair loss) Don't stand so close when stirring if you have frayed jeans, lesson learned
- Mix back in, protein rest 127 dropping to 125
- rest 15 minutes
- Second Decotion
- removed thick 1/3 of mash to small boil pot
- raised to 167 over 15 minutes
- rest 10 minutes
- raise to boiling over 15 minutes
- boil 30 minutes
- mix back into main mash, 152F (added 2 qts cold water to hit target)
- Rest 10 minutes
- Mash PH at 5.8, which is ok I guess, I'd prefer a bit lower, but onward, we're at step three now and there is no turning back
- Third Decoction
- remove thick 1/3 of mash (a lot harder to dig that up now than in step one)
- raise to 167 over 10 minutes
- stand 20 minutes
- raise to boil over 10 minutes
- boil 20 minutes
- add back to mash, target of 167F for mash out (plus or minus accuracy of crappy thermometer)
- Planned on mash out of 30 minutes, actually takes 52 because the damn sparge water
just will not get to 180F. Stainless Steel I love/hate you, you are so slow to warm up.
Still with me? Good cause I'm damn tired by this time, its been about 6 hours since I ground the malt, most of it spent standing over a hot burner stirring boiling or near boiling mash and I still have a 90 minute boil ahead of me. You just have a couple more sentences. Stick in there, I made it and am still (mostly) alive.
Oh did I mention, we haven't sparged yet. Yeah the water is finally hot. Sparged with 180F water. The mash stuck (twice), I never have stuck mashes (but then I never do decoctions either, maybe there is something to the theory of separate mash and lauter tuns... have to try that next time). It finally flowed cleanly after I rousted the hell out of it the second time. Anyway another 45+ minutes goes by and we're all mashed out around 12 gallons.
Initial 30 minute boil, no hops just cutting volume and DMS. Hooray for sitting around doing nothing. Added hops according to schedule, overall an uneventful boil. Used my good old trusty immersion chiller and dropped temperature to 73F. Volume was a little low (9.5 gallons) after boil (lots of heat) and gravity was a little high (1.07) so I added 1 gallon of cold water to bring to 10.5 gallons, took final gravity pitches yeast and had a home brew (actually I spent another hour and a half cleaning up then had a home brew, but you get the spirit).
Stay tuned to follow this beer through fermentation and consummation (some would say consumption, but after the amount of energy I've put into it, it had better be good enough to make me have some sort of higher experience).
