Going Lager Crazy (Biscuit Pilsner)

Lager #1 is still in primary, but I'm really liking the potential range of lagers I can produce, and I appreciate that some folks on here still like me enough to offer critiques of my recipes.

This one is a reworking of an old blonde/cream ale partial mash recipe from 2 years ago. I wasn't a huge fan of the end result back then because it didn't ever properly carbonate, and I found the fuggle hops just too underwhelming. I kept the grain bill nearly identical (using pils instead of American 2-row to match the use of pilsen DME) and revamped the hop schedule to use more noble hops.


As always, I humbly request the thoughts and suggestions of you seasoned lager veterans.

Bump. No thoughts from the lager vets?

If it is a "biscuit" pilsner why aren't you using Belgian Biscuit malt? I don't get a lot of biscuit notes with victory...more bready IMHO.

Otherwise it sounds interesting.

Have you seen any of the Briess seasonal malts? It would be interesting to use some of the Caracrystal Wheat malt instead of the wheat you're using, it's got a bit of a bready quality as well.

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDFs/Briess_PISB_CaracrystalWheat.pdf

In fact I might appropriate you base recipe and go with the bries wheat and bisquit myself, and see what I get.

I haven't done a lot with victory or biscuit, and I was under the impression that they were quite similar, biscuit being a "Belgian" version. I thought Fat Tire used Victory, but I could be mistaken.

I had not heard of the CaraCrystal Wheat either. The only brewing newsletter I'm subscribed to is the BYO emailer, and HBT isn't always great for brewing news.

I may just have to try it both ways now.

Or perhaps do a couple small-batch Victory and Biscuit SMaSHes to see the difference.

I might back off a little with the wheat. I like to use no more than .5 lbs for a 5 gal batch, particularly if I'm shoot for something very light and crisp. I find the wheat adds a surprising amount of body and richness in lagers (besides a nice head).

I might switch the Saaz to 15 or 20 min. That's a pretty good slug of late addition hops for a typical lager, but if you like that, go for it. Actually what I like to do is maybe 1 oz at 15-20 and then 0.5 oz (or less) at 5 min. to give a subtle hop aroma, but not enough to overpower the malty aromas.