German Pils Cat's **** "Bitburger" - Premium Pilsner

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What mash pH should i aim for? cheers brewers!

Typically, 5.4 is a great middle ground for beta and alpha. For higher gel temp grains (which I've been finding a lot lately with Weyermann), a higher mash pH might help with attenuation, 5.5 to 5.6.

There are a couple things I'd change in the recipe...
1) I'd skip carapils. Go pils and munich 1 for color
2) Typical commercial Northern German pilsners will not have late hop additions. All IBUs will come from one early hop addition, anywhere from start of boil to 45 minutes. For Bitburger, I'd go 30 to 35 IBUs with Perle or another noble hop. If I had to guess, the recipe was created with those late addition hops because the attenuation wasn't great
3) Which brings me to my next suggestion. OG should be closer to 1.046 and FG should be closer to 1.007. This beer needs to be super dry. Sweetness will hide the hops, which is why I mentioned the hop schedule in #2.
4) Pitch a ton of yeast. I use a pitch rate of 2.5m cells per mL of wort per °P which ends up being close to 100B cells per gallon of wort.

I actually brew this beer a lot as Bit is my favorite German pilsner. I can't compare OPs recipe since I haven't brewed it but with the suggests above, this beer is as close to Bit as a home brewer will get.
 
Ended up brewing this Saturday using repitched w34/70. Warm fermented at 66F and it's finishing up now. Should be lagering this in the next week or three lol Really curious to give this a shot!
 
I pulled a sample today and the yeast is done munching on the sugars. It’s in the clean up phase now and still a bit green. Aka needs to sit in primary a few more days to clean up before transferring to secondary and lagering. Anywho the thing about fermenting this at 66F is I pitched the yeast slurry a week ago and it’ll be ready to lager VERY soon!
 
I've never had a brew with it that's "clean" it has a weird ester to it. At first I thought maybe it was my technique or pitching rates so tried a few batches and got that same weird off flavor using different packets of the yeast. Some had starters, some didn't, pitched at a 2.0 rate, fermented between 53f-55f and even tried warm ferment. Same off flavor. Now I finally was able to get a hold of the Weinstephaner Original Premium (which I'm assuming uses the same yeast as w34/70 is a lager strain from Weinstephaner) same off flavor. Tried the Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest which was brewed in collaboration with Weinstephaner so I'm assuming it's the same exact yeast as it has the same off flavor. If I had to describe it it's something I would definitely expect in a german style weizen. It's like a banana/pear/bubblegum just weird and not appealing to me. Now I'll say if I wasn't bottling and could lager this for a good bit in a keg it might be ok. But since I bottle it seems having the bottles at room temps while carbing only exacerbates this issue. When I think lager I think clean. No esters and no phenols. Wyeast 2112 was a good representative of what I was shooting for when fermented at 58F for a few days with a slow ramp up. If the brew wasn't infected it would've been perfect!
I'm wondering about this. Currently have a lager I kegged a couple of weeks ago using 34/70 that has a strange bubble gum kind of taste. I'm thinking to put it back into the fridge for a couple weeks and hope it cleans up.
 
Ended up rebrewing this and it stayed off the heat prior to cooling a tad longer than I’d like. Somehow we lost the drain plug to the sink so had to improvise on the ice bath. Since mine SHOULD be a tad more bitter I think this batch will be appropriately named “Where’s the f***ng drain plug?!?!?! Pilsner” lol

This is a warm ferment (64f) with a 2 liter w34/70 starter. Hit full krausen in less than 12 hours and it’s actually blown off a bit! Can’t wait to taste the final product :)
 
I finally got this recipe right! Built a 2 liter starter and siphoned off a half liter for the freezer yeast bank. I warm fermented at 64f and this was my first ever kegged beer. I used the Pilsen water profile from Bruin water (I’m paying for the full version VERY soon) and only qualm I have is the Carapils and will just bump up the base malt to compensate next time. Outside of that this recipe tastes like something I would gladly serve at a microbrewery. This is right on the lines of Becks. Just need to lighten up the mouthfeel just a tad. Anywho here’s a picture of the celebratory first pour from the kegerator! Thanks so much for the awesome recipe! This is going to be a regular in the house :)
 

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Weighed the grains out for this brew last night. Going to brew the recipe this weekend on the Brewzilla. Wanted to circle back to this since it's been a good bit since it was last brewed. Pulled WLP830 from the freezer bank and will be using that this go around. Really excited to see how this turns out!
 
Just kegged this brew about 30 min ago. I moved it to secondary to clear out a fermenter on Sunday and that was extremely beneficial with WLP830. It helped in clearing. Now there is a sulfur component to WLP830 so I tried the ol Clawhammer trick of using floss and a copper scrub pad in the keg all sanitized of course. I could smell the sulfur screaming to get out of the keg. Clawhammer recommends leaving that in for an hour or so. It's been almost an hour so time to come out. I'm really curious to see how this works with WLP830 as I've always had sulfur fits with that strain. Fingers crossed it helps! I'll post pics in about 2 weeks of the finished brew :)
 
Just tapped the keg after it sat for almost 2 weeks. Looks and tastes great! Thanks for the recipe!
 

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Just tapped the keg after it sat for almost 2 weeks. Looks and tastes great! Thanks for the recipe!
RTSTRIDER, I am a huge Bitburger fan and now that I have started brewing lagers I am eager to try this one. My question is which recipe did you use? The original one from back in 2009 or one of the many modifications in the 130 replies? If you could share I would be most appreciative!
 
RTSTRIDER, I am a huge Bitburger fan and now that I have started brewing lagers I am eager to try this one. My question is which recipe did you use? The original one from back in 2009 or one of the many modifications in the 130 replies? If you could share I would be most appreciative!
I used the original and used WLP830. I'm not a fan of the WLP830 strain tbh. I plan on eventually rebrewing this with wlp850 and seeing what happens.
 
I used the original and used WLP830. I'm not a fan of the WLP830 strain tbh. I plan on eventually rebrewing this with wlp850 and seeing what happens.
Excellent thanks for the reply! I plan on doing the original recipe and then I will ask my local brewing supply which german yeast they recommend. Not knowing any better I would guess SafLager™ W-34/70 but I will ask. I have a Czech Pilsner fermenting at the moment, actually in the diacetyl rest phase, and I used SafLager S-23 dry yeast for it. Thanks again!
 
Excellent thanks for the reply! I plan on doing the original recipe and then I will ask my local brewing supply which german yeast they recommend. Not knowing any better I would guess SafLager™ W-34/70 but I will ask. I have a Czech Pilsner fermenting at the moment, actually in the diacetyl rest phase, and I used SafLager S-23 dry yeast for it. Thanks again!
I'd recommend W34/70 around 64F for this one from prior experience. Another fun one might be wlp940 or Cellarscience Baja (morebeer.com)
 
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