Vienna or Pilsner??

I'm brewing an APA today and don't have as much 2-Row on hand as I thought I had. I was wondering if I should bolster the grain bill with Vienna or Pilsner Malt...

4 lbs. American 2-Row
3 lbs. Munich
2 lbs. Vienna or Pilsner**
1 lb. Carapils
.5 lb. Crystal 80

Suggestions?

Personally, I'd use Pilsner. You're gonna get plenty of Character and some color from the Munich.

I think I'm going to experiment a little with the vienna. I tweaked the bill and this is what I'm going with:

4# 2-Row
4# Vienna
2# Munich
1# Carapils
.5# Crystal 80

5 Ozs of the homegrown Cascades for ~50 IBUs
US-05 to munch on sugars

I've been wanting to figure out what vienna can do for me anyway, I've heard it's a nice complimentary malt. Here's to the start of another brew day!

i use Vienna in my APA and IPA's from time to time, i like it.

Excellent! It's mashing as I type... I think it'll turn out pretty good. It will, after all, be beer.

That's a lot of munich and vienna but with that many IBUs it should come out really good.

I wanna do a SMaSH vienna/summit IPA if I can find the summit hops....

How well kilned is the 2-row? I would normally expect APA to be entirely Pale Malt (which is basically just another name for Vienna) plus a little crystal. If you're sticking significant Munich in I'd go with pilsner to balance it out a bit.

BarryNL said:

I would normally expect APA to be entirely Pale Malt (which is basically just another name for Vienna)...

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I'm not entirely sure that's correct (though I may well be wrong, so please correct me on this if need be). But my understanding is that pale malt could be any grain with a low color rating, including standard 2-row or something with a little more body like Maris Otter or Golden Promise. Vienna has a little more maltiness to it than standard 2-row, so whilst you could use Vienna as the base malt for a beer, it's not just "pale malt" - it's more substantial than that. As for the OP's question, I think either grain would work well. Pilsner gives a much lighter beer, whereas Vienna gives a tastier, fuller beer. In the proportions listed, either would work well, so I bet that the end product will be a damn fine beer.