Hi!
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I am Miraculix, I am German and I am lazy.
This led me to the development of the following recipe, which will result in a hoppy and dry German Pilsener with a nice grainy flavour. In addition to being one of the best pilsener I ever had (and I had many), this brew is incredibly quickly done, you can finish it in 1 to 1.5 hours, including cleaning. To accomplish this, I will break some of the rules of home brewing. Turns out that those rules are basically just unnecessary complications of the brewing process. So here we go, the raw, warm fermented German Pilsener:
General information:
The wort will not be boiled in this recipe, this means we have to do a hop tea on the side to isomerize the alpha acids. It can be done in water, no dissolved sugars necessary. The absence of sugar actually increases the isomerization efficiency. You can use the IBU calculator from the brewersfriend homepage to calculate the amount of hops necessary to reach your desired ibus. Just make sure that you type in a wort gravity of 1.00 and the correct volume of your hop tea as boil size.
The Lager Yeast safale 34 70 is capable of clean fermentation at room temperature. I use this fact in this recipe and ferment the beer at room temperature . Turns out, it actually works well. If you want to use a different lager yeast, you might need to be able to control the fermentation temperature and keep it low.
*40Ibus
OG: 1.05
FG: ca. 1.01
The grain bill:
95% Bohemian Pilsener
5% Melanoidin Malt
The melanoidin malt is in the bill to mimic a decoction mash. We cannot do a real decoction mash in this recipe, as this would create DMS which wouldnt be boiled off afterwards, as the wort is not boiled in this recipe, therefore the melanoidin instead. It is not a must, I just went for it and I like it.
*
The Hops:
@30min Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (40 IBUs)
After fermentation nearly finished, dry hop with Hallertauer Mittelfrueh to taste (I used 20g on 15 liters). You can skip the dry hopping if you want to, I actually like the noble dry hop addition a lot.
I used Hallertauer for Bittering as well, because I did not have anything else open at that time. You will end up with a big amount of hops to reach the 40 IBUs because of the relatively low alpha levels of the Hallertau veriety. I think it might be a good idea to replace a big part of the 30 min addition with Magnum, Admiral or other clean bittering hops and to throw in some Hallertau at 15, 5 and flame out instead.
*
The Mash:
I will describe my BIAB procedure, if you do not use BIAB, you will need to adapt it according to your system.
Take the desired final volume of beer and divide it by three. Two of those thirds will be used for the mash, the remaining third will be used for the hop tea.
Dough in with one third of the final volume and mash at around 65C. Stir well and let it mash for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, collect the wort and squeeze the ish out of the bag till you cannot get anything out of it anymore. Put the bag back into the mash ton and pour in the other third of the final volume which was designated to the mash. This water has to be cold. Stir well and let it sit for another five to ten minutes. This step will dissolve the remaining sugar into the water. Again, collect the wort, squeeze the ish out of the bag again till nothing gets out anymore.
Following this procedure, I get about 80% efficiency. If I mash 30 minutes longer, I will get around 85%, not worth the wait imo, but if you have the time, mash longer.
*
The hop tea:
The wort wont be boiled, so the hops need to be isomerized on the side. For this, we take on third of the final beer volume in form of water and boil the hops in it as described in the hop schedule above. After boiling, squeeze the hops out, you want all that bitter goodness coming out of them!
*
Finally, combine the wort and the Hop tea and chill it down to room temperature (I do no chill over night, but you can chill if you want to). Rehydrate the yeast in table water according to your favourite method and pitch it!
After ten days, it should be done. I was under time pressure and did bottle after ten days, but tbh I think this beer (as almost every other beer as well) would improve if you would give it more time on the yeast cake, speaking of probably one to three additional weeks.
*
It also has to be noted that the 34 70 does not flocculate well. I ended up with quite a bit of yeast in my bottles, still in suspension when botteling, this might also be better after additional time in the fermenter. Otherwise, some gelatine and a cold crash should also do the trick.
*
FAQ:
As this brew is a bit unusual, here are some answers to the most common questions (which I had myself as well).
*
What about DMS?!
DMS starts to build up in the wort when the wort is heated above 80C. As this wort never exceeds mashing temperature, there wont be any DMS present.
*
What about sanitation? Doesnt the wort need to be boiled to be free of bugs?
No. If something is held at 60C or above for more than a few minutes, it gets pasteurised. That is, in the homebrew context, as good as being boiled.
*
Boiling the hops in pure water results in grassy flavour! I know that because . I read it somewhere!
No it does not. The pilsener in this recipe has a nice noble hop flavour, no grass, nothing bad, just nice.
*
OK guys, would be fun to see somebody else sharing his/her experience with this type of quick lager, maybe even tweak some of the mentioned parameters. I for myself learned a lot during this experimental brew and I hope you can get something out of it as well. The next no boil ale is already in the fermenter J
*
Ahh and btw. It does not only taste very nice, it also looks quite nice:
*
*
Cheers!
*
I am Miraculix, I am German and I am lazy.
This led me to the development of the following recipe, which will result in a hoppy and dry German Pilsener with a nice grainy flavour. In addition to being one of the best pilsener I ever had (and I had many), this brew is incredibly quickly done, you can finish it in 1 to 1.5 hours, including cleaning. To accomplish this, I will break some of the rules of home brewing. Turns out that those rules are basically just unnecessary complications of the brewing process. So here we go, the raw, warm fermented German Pilsener:
General information:
The wort will not be boiled in this recipe, this means we have to do a hop tea on the side to isomerize the alpha acids. It can be done in water, no dissolved sugars necessary. The absence of sugar actually increases the isomerization efficiency. You can use the IBU calculator from the brewersfriend homepage to calculate the amount of hops necessary to reach your desired ibus. Just make sure that you type in a wort gravity of 1.00 and the correct volume of your hop tea as boil size.
The Lager Yeast safale 34 70 is capable of clean fermentation at room temperature. I use this fact in this recipe and ferment the beer at room temperature . Turns out, it actually works well. If you want to use a different lager yeast, you might need to be able to control the fermentation temperature and keep it low.
*40Ibus
OG: 1.05
FG: ca. 1.01
The grain bill:
95% Bohemian Pilsener
5% Melanoidin Malt
The melanoidin malt is in the bill to mimic a decoction mash. We cannot do a real decoction mash in this recipe, as this would create DMS which wouldnt be boiled off afterwards, as the wort is not boiled in this recipe, therefore the melanoidin instead. It is not a must, I just went for it and I like it.
*
The Hops:
@30min Hallertauer Mittelfrueh (40 IBUs)
After fermentation nearly finished, dry hop with Hallertauer Mittelfrueh to taste (I used 20g on 15 liters). You can skip the dry hopping if you want to, I actually like the noble dry hop addition a lot.
I used Hallertauer for Bittering as well, because I did not have anything else open at that time. You will end up with a big amount of hops to reach the 40 IBUs because of the relatively low alpha levels of the Hallertau veriety. I think it might be a good idea to replace a big part of the 30 min addition with Magnum, Admiral or other clean bittering hops and to throw in some Hallertau at 15, 5 and flame out instead.
*
The Mash:
I will describe my BIAB procedure, if you do not use BIAB, you will need to adapt it according to your system.
Take the desired final volume of beer and divide it by three. Two of those thirds will be used for the mash, the remaining third will be used for the hop tea.
Dough in with one third of the final volume and mash at around 65C. Stir well and let it mash for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, collect the wort and squeeze the ish out of the bag till you cannot get anything out of it anymore. Put the bag back into the mash ton and pour in the other third of the final volume which was designated to the mash. This water has to be cold. Stir well and let it sit for another five to ten minutes. This step will dissolve the remaining sugar into the water. Again, collect the wort, squeeze the ish out of the bag again till nothing gets out anymore.
Following this procedure, I get about 80% efficiency. If I mash 30 minutes longer, I will get around 85%, not worth the wait imo, but if you have the time, mash longer.
*
The hop tea:
The wort wont be boiled, so the hops need to be isomerized on the side. For this, we take on third of the final beer volume in form of water and boil the hops in it as described in the hop schedule above. After boiling, squeeze the hops out, you want all that bitter goodness coming out of them!
*
Finally, combine the wort and the Hop tea and chill it down to room temperature (I do no chill over night, but you can chill if you want to). Rehydrate the yeast in table water according to your favourite method and pitch it!
After ten days, it should be done. I was under time pressure and did bottle after ten days, but tbh I think this beer (as almost every other beer as well) would improve if you would give it more time on the yeast cake, speaking of probably one to three additional weeks.
*
It also has to be noted that the 34 70 does not flocculate well. I ended up with quite a bit of yeast in my bottles, still in suspension when botteling, this might also be better after additional time in the fermenter. Otherwise, some gelatine and a cold crash should also do the trick.
*
FAQ:
As this brew is a bit unusual, here are some answers to the most common questions (which I had myself as well).
*
What about DMS?!
DMS starts to build up in the wort when the wort is heated above 80C. As this wort never exceeds mashing temperature, there wont be any DMS present.
*
What about sanitation? Doesnt the wort need to be boiled to be free of bugs?
No. If something is held at 60C or above for more than a few minutes, it gets pasteurised. That is, in the homebrew context, as good as being boiled.
*
Boiling the hops in pure water results in grassy flavour! I know that because . I read it somewhere!
No it does not. The pilsener in this recipe has a nice noble hop flavour, no grass, nothing bad, just nice.
*
OK guys, would be fun to see somebody else sharing his/her experience with this type of quick lager, maybe even tweak some of the mentioned parameters. I for myself learned a lot during this experimental brew and I hope you can get something out of it as well. The next no boil ale is already in the fermenter J
*
Ahh and btw. It does not only taste very nice, it also looks quite nice:
*
*
Cheers!
