beerdragon
Active Member
Hello all!
I'm returning to the brewing scene after a long hiatus and in the past, I've always brewed ales, porters, and stouts. Now, for my return, I decided to brew a Pilsner because I really wanted to get my technique down and Pilsner is quite unforgiving with off-tastes.
I'm still extract-brewing until I can get the all-grain equipment setup.
I'm in Portland, Oregon and right now, the temps are in the 30s and I have a cold room that is in the high 40s. Perfect for fermentation and lagering.
My questions (and I've searched in a lot of places but no straight answers):
1) The extract kit I got for the American Pilsner only came with LME, Malt Extract, hops, and yeast. No grains. How do I initiate the boil? Get the water up to 155 degrees and then add the LME and extract and then start the hop boils at 60/10/2 minutes? I'm used to adding the LME in the beginning of the boil and then the malt in the last 15 minutes. I've searched everywhere for the exact steps because I want this to be right.
2) I've read that due to the Lager yeast, I need to add more. I got that part but I've read that i need to get the yeast starter at the same temperature as the wort before pitching. So I take the temp of the starter and get the wort to that temp, pitch? Or get the wort down to 45 degrees and ice the starter down to 45 and pitch?
3) Flavoring - I plan to split the 5 gal batch to 2 3-gallon secondaries for the conditioning phase. The first 3-gal will be a pure Pilsner. The second one, I'm toying with the idea to flavor it with coriander and sweet orange peel. The amounts I've read, 1oz for each so if I'm doing a 2.5 gal batch for the flavor, means .5oz for each ingredient? Any issues with doing this when the conditioning phase starts?
Many thanks! I know there's many questions but I just want to make sure I got everything thought out so my brew day is stressfree and fun. Thanks!
I'm returning to the brewing scene after a long hiatus and in the past, I've always brewed ales, porters, and stouts. Now, for my return, I decided to brew a Pilsner because I really wanted to get my technique down and Pilsner is quite unforgiving with off-tastes.
I'm still extract-brewing until I can get the all-grain equipment setup.I'm in Portland, Oregon and right now, the temps are in the 30s and I have a cold room that is in the high 40s. Perfect for fermentation and lagering.
My questions (and I've searched in a lot of places but no straight answers):
1) The extract kit I got for the American Pilsner only came with LME, Malt Extract, hops, and yeast. No grains. How do I initiate the boil? Get the water up to 155 degrees and then add the LME and extract and then start the hop boils at 60/10/2 minutes? I'm used to adding the LME in the beginning of the boil and then the malt in the last 15 minutes. I've searched everywhere for the exact steps because I want this to be right.
2) I've read that due to the Lager yeast, I need to add more. I got that part but I've read that i need to get the yeast starter at the same temperature as the wort before pitching. So I take the temp of the starter and get the wort to that temp, pitch? Or get the wort down to 45 degrees and ice the starter down to 45 and pitch?
3) Flavoring - I plan to split the 5 gal batch to 2 3-gallon secondaries for the conditioning phase. The first 3-gal will be a pure Pilsner. The second one, I'm toying with the idea to flavor it with coriander and sweet orange peel. The amounts I've read, 1oz for each so if I'm doing a 2.5 gal batch for the flavor, means .5oz for each ingredient? Any issues with doing this when the conditioning phase starts?
Many thanks! I know there's many questions but I just want to make sure I got everything thought out so my brew day is stressfree and fun. Thanks!
