Strangly flat Pilsner

[beerology]

Hi, I did a Pilsner last week, fairly straightforward, 3kg Pilsner, 1kg Vienna, 0.5 kg Cara-pils malts, big hop additions, 29g Pacific Jade at start of boil, 50g Santiam at end of boil, 100g of Cascade and 100g of Simcoe steeped during the mash/boil and added cold to the fermenter.
I set the pressure relief valve on the fermenter at 2.1 bar to really get some gas in the beer.
I have a tap on the fermenter so I can pour straight to the glass when clarification is finished but when I pour this it mostly comes out as foam and leaves me with flat beer. I keep the fermenter at 2 bar so there isn't a big pressure drop as I pour so the question is, why is the beer coming out flat?
The only change from normal is I used bottled spring water (very expensive flat beer!) as my rain water tank had a couple of dead birds in it and had to be pumped out.
Any bright ideas?

 

[doug293cz]

What is the temperature of the beer? 2.1 bar (30psi) is a lot of pressure, and will create excessive carbonation at temps less than room temp. To serve beer with that kind of carb level, you will need long beer lines or a flow control faucet to avoid a foamy pour, with loss of carbonation in the glass. How is your tap configured?

Brew on

 

[Magnus314]

Just a thought- lager yeast will continue to carbonate at much lower temps than ale yeast. I've had lager yeasts foam out at 40* when ale yeasts were fully crashed out and poured fine.

Could be it continued carbonating while in the serving keg. If so, take it off the gas and pour off a full pitcher/3-4 pints and it should gas off. Then set to regular serve pressure and you should be good.

 

[beerology]

Hi Guys, thanks for coming back so quickly. The fermentation was done at 17c and when finished five days later (hydrometer was at 1.001, OG was 1.037, I'd used some Amyloglucosidase to really get anything fermentable into alcohol and make the beer low-carb) then turned down to 2c for the clarification and up to 5c for serving temp.
I did drop the gas in the fermenter down to 1 bar ( I brew in a Williams Warn www.williamswarn.com) and that seemed to help a little. I managed to get it into bottles today, through my Blitchman beer gun but it was a bit of a circus, I think this one goes down to experience.
I'll go back to ale this week but I will have to spend Christmas drinking disappointing Lager, with all the gas on the outside, as I can't bring myself to pour it down the drive.......
Cheers
Mark