Did I ruin my first pils attempt ?

[Beermeister32]

Anecdotally people do use Pils malt in varying amounts for different boil lengths and intensity levels.

I'll stick to my 90 minute Pilsner boils though. "Once bitten twice shy" as they say....!

 

[OldDogBrewing]

I brew short and shoddy 30 min boils all the time with Pils malt and no DMS - I think that's just an old myth perpetuated out of unmodified pils malts. Not saying it couldn't happen but this pils malt is the only base malt I've used for the past 3 years and no issues on a 30 minute boil - have even done a 20 min with no DMS.

I use a highly modified german pils though - Avangard Malz

I just drank an IPA I made with pils as base malt and a 20 minute boil, no DMS at all.

Some malsters maybe require such long boils but with the local malster I use or Weyermann, I had no issues

 

[shoreman]

It isn't a myth. I've had it happen. My LHBS only sells one brand of each type of base malt so I don't have much choice in malts unless I want.to buy 55 lb bags, which I'm not at that stage.

What size batches do you brew? I'm beginning to wonder if that has any bearing on DMS production and purging.

2.5 gallon and 5 gallon batches.

Brulosophy did a few experiments on it but this one stands out as the best b/c they sent it off for testing in a lab for DMS - Update: Lab Data on Pils Malt Boil Length exBEERiment

"A sample from each batch was sent to a lab for objective analysis, the results of which validated the results of the original xBmt: neither the 30 minute boil nor 90 minute boil samples contained measurable levels of DMS."

 

[shoreman]

One of my favorite beers - 100% pils, 100% Amarillo hops. 30 minute mash, 30 minute boil then dry hopped. Never experienced DMS. I've never brewed it at scale like a 10BBL batch, I guess at those levels it would be very important to make sure DMS is not an issue, just never experienced it myself and there's data that points to highly modified malts not needing it. I can see if it happened to you at some point, you might be cautious, but who knows if it was the boil length that was the issue - you can get DMS from other faults in process.

 

[bu_gee]

Much agreed that it is good data helps us understand what actual problems exist, but I would note that almost every DMS problem I've seen reported on these forums has involved pils malt, but the plural of anecdote isn't data.

What it does imply to me, however, is that pils does require a particular method that is both easy to accidentally do and easy to accidentally not do and easily do so relatively repeatably.

I've done the 60 vs 90 minute boil test. Being the test conductor, I swore I was getting more DMS in the 60 min, but blind tasters couldn't tell any difference even when I described what flavors to look for. Being a firm believer in placebo effect, I tend to want to believe them, but I wish I had a group of buddies I could put 3 beers in front of and say "which one has the most DMS?"

 

[bu_gee]

This got me thinking:

I can't find the thread anymore, but the claim was that the DMS in your beer was inversely proportional to the amount of copper in your water. That is, if your water is freakishly low in copper, DMS is more likely. The proposed solution was to throw pennies into the water or use a copper wort chiller in the last 5-10 minutes of your boil.

This fits the "easy to accidentally do or not do repeatably" mold, but again anecdotes aren't data.

 

[Immocles]

This got me thinking:

I can't find the thread anymore, but the claim was that the DMS in your beer was inversely proportional to the amount of copper in your water. That is, if your water is freakishly low in copper, DMS is more likely. The proposed solution was to throw pennies into the water or use a copper wort chiller in the last 5-10 minutes of your boil.

This fits the "easy to accidentally do or not do repeatably" mold, but again anecdotes aren't data.

I recall seeing that as well. I also agree with @Beermeister32 in that if you've experienced it once, you're far more likely to avoid it at all costs. I only use pilsner malt about 4-5 times a year and have experienced vegetal, cabbagey flavor only once. And that was on my first brew on a new system. The boil was noticeably less boil-y than my old set up, and I was pretty fast and loose with the boil time because I was in a hurry. Since that brew, I tack on 15minutes (to 75M overall) to my pilsner boils and have not experienced it again. I *think* I've only used weyermann (and their barke as well) for pilsner, but there might have been a random 5 pounds of briess in there somewhere as well.

 

[Beermeister32]

Here's a great video podcast (Beersmith #121) which includes a good section on DMS reduction with Dr. Charlie Bamforth. Also copper not the answer in this as well.

 

[shoreman]

Check out Scott Janish’s article on DMS, there’s plenty of other ways it shows up in beer outside of boil times in pilsner malt.

https://scottjanish.com/how-to-prevent-dms-in-beer/

 

[bu_gee]

Here's a great video podcast (Beersmith #121) which includes a good section on DMS reduction with Dr. Charlie Bamforth. Also copper not the answer in this as well.

Interesting. Altitude also fits that condition.

 

[TKaija]

So far looks like the fluid that got sucked in didn’t bother it to much , did notice a little less hop flavor , OG was about the same .
I let it set a couple more days just to make sure but so far so good , I did keg it up today and dropped temp to lager
I’m kinda thinking about dry hopping to get some flavor back but I’ve never done it and have no idea how much hops to add for a couple gallons of beer , if I did it I would use Saaz hops in a small bag I have . Any thoughts on dry hopping ??

So how did it turn out? Was it safe to drink?