Two Pilsner Recipes and a Picture

[edgeoftheUS]

Back in September my partner told me she bought a refrigerator from someone for $100 and I just needed to go pick it up. She heard me mention trying a lager and wanted to make it happen. Turns out it was much nicer than expected

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Here are the recipes I used:

Wyeast 2007 - x2 with starter
9 Pils
4 Vienna
1 Munich
1 Honey

2 oz Sterling (70 mins)
1 oz Sterling (45 mins)
1 oz Sterling (15 mins)

20 mins @ 122
60 mins @ 154
10 mins @ 170



2278 - x2 with starter
11 Pils
1 Caramunich
1 Carapils


2 oz Sterling (70 mins)
1 oz Saaz (45 mins)
1 oz Saaz (15 mins)

20 mins @ 122
60 mins @ 154
10 mins @ 170


The Saaz are homegrown and the Sterling came from hopsdirect in Spokane area of WA.

Brew day was 18-Sep-13.

I pitched at ~17C (63 F) and placed directly into refrigerator that was set at 5C (41F). Here is a picture after a month

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After forgetting about them for a bit I pulled them out mid January and warmed to 14C for 48 hours. There was some airlock activity, tossed em back in the fridge for another 72 hours then bottled.

Here is the top recipe final results

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Cheers.

 

[blakelyc]

Looks amazing!! I only have room for one lager at a time, and it is killing me.

So how did they taste?

 

[edgeoftheUS]

Looks amazing!! I only have room for one lager at a time, and it is killing me.

So how did they taste?

They're both great! But quite different.

The 2007 yeast smelled like a typical american pils (think michelob or coors) at pitch but the final flavor is quite bright and light. The sterling hops are just citrusy enough to lend a mild pala ale taste with the vienna malt just shining through.

The czech pils with saaz hops is spicy...to the point i had someone ask if I threw in some pink peppercorns in the batch.

Some other notes I should throw in there to reassure first timers or just for the documentation:

2278 formed a krausen after a week. 2007 took a month. Both kept the foam for 90ish days.

these were bottled, and keeping them in the garage at 55ish took them 3 weeks to carb.

I way overshot on my calcs. O.G's were 1.065 and 1.058. not sure why i was more efficient.

Worth mentioning again i built starters from two packets, prob somewhere around 6E9 (6 billion) cells, so thats why i pitched and put directly into the fridge. It was going to take 36+ hours to cool anyways with both carboys.

 

[edgeoftheUS]

Here's the other, styled in a pour the gourd glass from years past.