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weihenstephaner

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So a few weeks ago I came by a free freezer. Since I had everything I needed, I built a small temperature controller, hooked it up to a spare netbook, and it is happily maintaining and logging its temperature now. I live in an apartment, so I've primarily done extract kits. I ferment them in a 7 gallon bucket, rack them to a secondary (carboy or bucket, depends), let them clear a while, fill into a corny keg, and force carbonate in and serve from a separate kegorator.
Anyway... so now that I have good temperature control during the fermentation I've been thinking about what I can do with that. I was wondering what luck and with what yeasts and at what temperature people ferment. I interned at a medium sized brewery in germany many moons ago. I seem to recall they fermented their hefeweizen at 16-18 C for about 14 days in open vats. The vast majority of homebrewers seem to feel that anything below 18 C is asking for the yeast to crap out and get a stuck fermentation though. I'm not sure if it's worth trying fermenting colder than 19 C.
I also have an interest in making a czech style pilsener. I was going to try a simple recipe: 5 oz saaz most of it at the beginning of the (partial) boil, enough of the lightest extract I can find to get to 12 plato, ferment with (?) lager yeast, diacetyl rest, fill into a corny keg, let clear and condition, and transfer into a new clean keg. Has anyone done something similar? Any suggestions on how to make a better extract based pilsner?
 
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