Weyermann Barke Pilsner - I made FIRE!

[Mer-man]

Not to hijack the thread (ok, maybe a little), but this seems germane to the discussion. Great Fermentations of Indiana is hosting a Pilsner Malt Showcase event on Saturday, January 11th. It's free and you can sign up for a 1pm or 3pm time slot.

Yours truly brewed seven (yes seven) five gallon batches w/ 100% Pils malt within a 10 day period-- each brewed identically (same yeast, water, hops, process) with one of seven North American and Continental pilsner malts. All the maltsters/malts have been mentioned previously in this discussion, plus there will be a few more. I brewed them to the high-end of Helles-Export specs. I have put together a blind evaluation sheet for participants to complete (which I will scan and return for their reference along w/ the "reveal" on each sample) rating the finished beer for flavor & aroma characteristics typical of pilsner malts (bready, crackery, honey, grainy, etc etc).

I'll post results here in January.

https://www.facebook.com/events/979136075804402/

https://www.greatfermentations.com/calevents/pilsner-malt-showcase-tasting-event/

It's almost time!

 

[friarsmith]

It's almost time!

Have been printing handouts etc today. Beers are ready to go! I pitched this to Zymurgy and there's a good chance I'll be writing an article about the event and results. It will take me a few days to data enter and analyze the information, but I should be able to post some preliminary info later next week.

 

[passedpawn]

Have been printing handouts etc today. Beers are ready to go! I pitched this to Zymurgy and there's a good chance I'll be writing an article about the event and results. It will take me a few days to data enter and analyze the information, but I should be able to post some preliminary info later next week.

Post here when you have any data. Perhaps feed back here will help you with your article.

 

[passedpawn]

Kegged new batch of this. Difference: no melanoiden malt. I drank the hydrometer sample and it does seem less malty, though there was only ounces in the first batch. But I know that you can't trust the flavor of early beers, especially before kegging and carbonation. The reason two of the kegs are short is because I let my boy keep an eye on the boil kettle during that batch. Gah.

 

[Mer-man]

Yeah, without the melanoidin it will be less rich, but the Barke has a depth of breadiness in contrast to the more grass and honey of classic W pilsner malt, in my experience.

 

[ratinator]

Kegged new batch of this. Difference: no melanoiden malt. I drank the hydrometer sample and it does seem less malty, though there was only ounces in the first batch. But I know that you can't trust the flavor of early beers, especially before kegging and carbonation. The reason two of the kegs are short is because I let my boy keep an eye on the boil kettle during that batch. Gah.

View attachment 661041

What's your fermentation schedule? I always do ales, thinking of doing some lagering and might try this recipe out once I get your feedback on the melanoiden

 

[passedpawn]

What's your fermentation schedule? I always do ales, thinking of doing some lagering and might try this recipe out once I get your feedback on the melanoiden

2 weeks at 55F. I check the gravity after 2 weeks and if it's at around 1.010 I crash to 33F with gelatin for 2 days, then pull out and keg (that's what you see in picture above).

If you ferment any colder than that, you might need to wait 3 weeks. I used to ferment at 50F (or just below) and at two weeks it usually was not done. When I fermented that cold, I would ferment for 3 weeks, and also raise the temperature during the last few days to 55F to make sure it got done.

 

[Die_Beerery]

Or when you pitch the proper amount of healthy yeast it’s 5 days util spund 7 days at FG and fully carbed, and zero oxidation at 45f.

 

[Spartan1979]

And your experience is . . . ?

I haven't decided yet. Initial thought was I liked the regular Weyermann Pils malt better, but I need to sit down with a glass and really think about it. One thing is that the Barke malt version hasn't cleared as well as the regular. But it's a small sample size.

 

[balrog]

@passedpawn , wha happens should I not have Jester for the 60m? Sub with Magnum ok? Or is theere some delicate flavinoidal delivered by Jester?

 

[beersk]

Or when you pitch the proper amount of healthy yeast it’s 5 days util spund 7 days at FG and fully carbed, and zero oxidation at 45f.

Precisely. And that's a huge amount of yeast.

 

[passedpawn]

Or when you pitch the proper amount of healthy yeast it’s 5 days util spund 7 days at FG and fully carbed, and zero oxidation at 45f.

Right. I do pitch a ton of yeast, typically from mason jars.

 

[passedpawn]

@passedpawn , wha happens should I not have Jester for the 60m? Sub with Magnum ok? Or is theere some delicate flavinoidal delivered by Jester?

I'd just use any high-AA hop for the bittering. I happened to have some jester I was hoping to use up.

 

[Die_Beerery]

Right. I do pitch a ton of yeast, typically from mason jars.

And for those who don't know...
Generally speaking, the proper yeast pitch for cold fermenting lager beer is roughly 1 smack pack per gallon of wort in the fermenter. So about 100billion cells per gallon. For me and my processes that equates to about 1/2 of a quart mason jar of pure yeast, no trub, per 5g finished batch. This was came upon by scoping and counting.
Active fermentation within 4-5hrs, and ~8 gravity points per day of fermentation. If you are not getting that you under-pitched or have other nutrient/performance issues.

prost.

 

[passedpawn]

And for those who don't know...
Generally speaking, the proper yeast pitch for cold fermenting lager beer is roughly 1 smack pack per gallon of wort in the fermenter. So about 100billion cells per gallon. For me and my processes that equates to about 1/2 of a quart mason jar of pure yeast, no trub, per 5g finished batch. This was came upon by scoping and counting.
Active fermentation within 4-5hrs, and ~8 gravity points per day of fermentation. If you are not getting that you under-pitched or have other nutrient/performance issues.

prost.

I don't get that fermentation rate. I use a pint mason jar of slurry for 10g. That slurry is lots of trub, so I'm way under your rate. But frankly, I doubt many homebrewers are pitching that much yeast, especially if they aren't continuously making lagers.

I used to do cell counts, but I've gotten very lazy in the last X years. Maybe I'll get the scope and hemocytometer out of the closet and see how many viable cells are in my mason jar.

 

[Mer-man]

Yeah, most home brewers under pitch.

 

[ba-brewer]

I go by the recommendation of mr malty and brew united for my estimates and most of my lagers are done or just about to FG 5 days post pitch. I start at 50F then bump temp by 3 degrees F at 50% 75% and 90% of target attenuation. In the keg by day 8 or 10.

My Barke Helles, no fire just a nice beer. 8lb of barke pilsner and 1lb of barke munich.

 

[Robert65]

My Barke Helles, no fire just a nice beer. 8lb of barke pilsner and 1lb of barke munich.
View attachment 661207

@ba-brewer, I'm really liking something like that in a Helles, about 10% Barke Munich with the Barke Pilsner.

Here's one I just tapped that's 100% Barke Pilsner, just to see what's what. Easily my favorite Pilsner malt. Could fly solo in a Pilsner maybe. In a Helles, I'm liking the little sumpin sumpin.

[Please ignore ugly keezer. It keeps beer cold and lets it out, and it was a totally spontaneous, one day project.]

 

[Dave Sarber]

That's interesting. My latest batch of tripel used 15 pounds of Dingemans Pils, and was supposed to use 1 lb of Vienna, but I substituted a pound of Barke Munich instead. Just finishing up primary right now, looks like molten peanut butter.

 

[schematix]

But frankly, I doubt many homebrewers are pitching that much yeast, especially if they aren't continuously making lagers.

I changed my brewing habits due to this. So much easier to have lots of viable yeast on hand when you repitch. Start with a low OG pils, work my way up, brewing a new batch every 10-14 days with repitched yeast. I get all my brewing done in about a 6 week period then don't have to brew again for quite a few months.

Makes a positive difference though.

 

[ba-brewer]

I changed my brewing habits due to this. So much easier to have lots of viable yeast on hand when you repitch. Start with a low OG pils, work my way up, brewing a new batch every 10-14 days with repitched yeast. I get all my brewing done in about a 6 week period then don't have to brew again for quite a few months.

Makes a positive difference though.

My lagers have been moving slow the last year, so I have not been able to make use of the yeast cakes. I was contemplating re-allocating some of the lager kegs to some other kind of beer to get a faster turn over, but maybe doing a few back to back brews would be a better way to go. Less starters to build for sure.

 

[Aristoi]

Has anyone noticed low pH readings using this Barke Pilsner malt?

I just brewed a couple batches using this malt and noticed pH was off by 0.22 lower than predicted in MME with Pilsner DI base profile. I initially thought it was my pH meter as this was the biggest discrepancy to date. I re-calibrated and found actual pH was 0.05 lower than first reading or now 0.27 lower than predicted. It was a darker beer (15 SRM) and then thought it was the specialty grains having a larger effect and disregarded.

I then made a second beer with this malt, it was lighter than the first beer (9 SRM) with a lower % of pilsner than the first and it came in 0.20 lower than predicted. Has anyone else had this experience with this malt? I am thinking i may need to use a different base DI pH profile, or calculate it myself to confirm, or perhaps there is something else going on if nobody else noticed a pH shift or it behaving differently than standard Weyermann pilsner.

Also @friarsmith would like to know if your pilsner malt comparison notes have come out or if they are posted somewhere. I was looking forward to that.

 

[passedpawn]

Has anyone noticed low pH readings using this Barke Pilsner malt?

I just brewed a couple batches using this malt and noticed pH was off by 0.22 lower than predicted in MME with Pilsner DI base profile. I initially thought it was my pH meter as this was the biggest discrepancy to date. I re-calibrated and found actual pH was 0.05 lower than first reading or now 0.27 lower than predicted. It was a darker beer (15 SRM) and then thought it was the specialty grains having a larger effect and disregarded.

I then made a second beer with this malt, it was lighter than the first beer (9 SRM) with a lower % of pilsner than the first and it came in 0.20 lower than predicted. Has anyone else had this experience with this malt? I am thinking i may need to use a different base DI pH profile, or calculate it myself to confirm, or perhaps there is something else going on if nobody else noticed a pH shift or it behaving differently than standard Weyermann pilsner.

Also @friarsmith would like to know if your pilsner malt comparison notes have come out or if they are posted somewhere. I was looking forward to that.

I have not been doing pH measurements, but I'll have a look next time I brew with it.

 

[passedpawn]

Is 4oz of melanoiden really doing anything for you in this grain bill with 20lbs of Pilsner malt? I bet you could leave it out and not notice a difference.

I made a new batch of this pilsner, but without the melanoiden. It's only been in the keg for a couple of weeks, but I swear it tastes different. That is, that small amount of melanoiden made a difference. I prefer this beer WITH the melanoiden, so I'm putting it in there next time I brew.

With the melanoiden, I'd describe this beer as a czech/bohemian pilsner. Without, more of a german pilsner.

 

[Spartan1979]

I made a new batch of this pilsner, but without the melanoiden. It's only been in the keg for a couple of weeks, but I swear it tastes different. That is, that small amount of melanoiden made a difference. I prefer this beer WITH the melanoiden, so I'm putting it in there next time I brew.

With the melanoiden, I'd describe this beer as a czech/bohemian pilsner. Without, more of a german pilsner.

I put 2 ounces of melanoidin in my Pils. I tried 4 but it was too much. I took second in Pils at NHC for what that's worth.

 

[passedpawn]

I put 2 ounces of melanoidin in my Pils. I tried 4 but it was too much. I took second in Pils at NHC for what that's worth.

Batch size?

 

[Die_Beerery]

Has anyone noticed low pH readings using this Barke Pilsner malt?

I just brewed a couple batches using this malt and noticed pH was off by 0.22 lower than predicted in MME with Pilsner DI base profile. I initially thought it was my pH meter as this was the biggest discrepancy to date. I re-calibrated and found actual pH was 0.05 lower than first reading or now 0.27 lower than predicted. It was a darker beer (15 SRM) and then thought it was the specialty grains having a larger effect and disregarded.

I then made a second beer with this malt, it was lighter than the first beer (9 SRM) with a lower % of pilsner than the first and it came in 0.20 lower than predicted. Has anyone else had this experience with this malt? I am thinking i may need to use a different base DI pH profile, or calculate it myself to confirm, or perhaps there is something else going on if nobody else noticed a pH shift or it behaving differently than standard Weyermann pilsner.

Also @friarsmith would like to know if your pilsner malt comparison notes have come out or if they are posted somewhere. I was looking forward to that.

No, pH is actually higher than normal pils malts. Looking at your malt analyses sheets would show you this.

 

[friarsmith]

Has anyone noticed low pH readings using this Barke Pilsner malt?

I just brewed a couple batches using this malt and noticed pH was off by 0.22 lower than predicted in MME with Pilsner DI base profile. I initially thought it was my pH meter as this was the biggest discrepancy to date. I re-calibrated and found actual pH was 0.05 lower than first reading or now 0.27 lower than predicted. It was a darker beer (15 SRM) and then thought it was the specialty grains having a larger effect and disregarded.

I then made a second beer with this malt, it was lighter than the first beer (9 SRM) with a lower % of pilsner than the first and it came in 0.20 lower than predicted. Has anyone else had this experience with this malt? I am thinking i may need to use a different base DI pH profile, or calculate it myself to confirm, or perhaps there is something else going on if nobody else noticed a pH shift or it behaving differently than standard Weyermann pilsner.

Also @friarsmith would like to know if your pilsner malt comparison notes have come out or if they are posted somewhere. I was looking forward to that.

I should finish crunching the numbers this weekend. All the data is entered. I will most likely post a thread link here and start a new thread.

 

[Brooothru]

And for those who don't know...
Generally speaking, the proper yeast pitch for cold fermenting lager beer is roughly 1 smack pack per gallon of wort in the fermenter. So about 100billion cells per gallon. For me and my processes that equates to about 1/2 of a quart mason jar of pure yeast, no trub, per 5g finished batch. This was came upon by scoping and counting.
Active fermentation within 4-5hrs, and ~8 gravity points per day of fermentation. If you are not getting that you under-pitched or have other nutrient/performance issues.

prost.

Must agree. I'm now a believer. The biggest issue for me isn't using pitch calculators, but rather having an accurate idea of what my viable yeast count is for an entering argument in the calculation. I'm presently fermenting a Pre-Prohibition lager using a second generation WLP-830 German Lager yeast. The yeast was harvested nearly 8 months ago, but I had about 3/8" thick, clean slurry that had been under about 8 oz of 'beer' in a 38F refrigerator. I performed a viability test batch with 1 qt starter wort for 48 hours on a stir plate, after decanting the spent beer. After crashing, the volume of slurry appeared to have doubled.

So I decanted the beer leaving enough to swirl and resuspend the yeast (about 500 ml thick slurry). I had no accurate idea of yeast cell count, just some vague guesstimates. From my reading of the pitch calculator, I guessed that 300 ml was the magic number of this thick, very active slurry.

The wort in the fermenter was 50F, the yeast temperature was around 43F for cold pitching. The yeast was pitched oxygen-free through a purged and pressurized yeast brink, followed with 60 seconds of O2 @ 4L/min. flow rate into the sealed fermenter.

After 24 hours there were no signs of fermentation. I hit it with a short burst of CO2. Eight hours later, still no visible activity from the blow-off. I raised the temperature to 54F over the next 8 hours, but still no activity. So after 40 hours I still wasn't seeing signs of fermentation. I drew off a sample to see if gravity had fallen. There were a few tiny bubbles in the sample and gravity appeared to have fallen by a couple of points, so I knew that at least there was something going on in the tank.

At the same time the Fast Ferment Test of ~40 hours was complete. That FFT had been drawn from the fermenter after the yeast had been pitched and oxygenated. I had ranched the bulk of the starter, so I decanted and dumped that thick slurry into the FFT sample and pitched the whole thing (~600 ml). I'm estimating maybe 750 ml total thick viable slurry and maybe 200 ml beer from the FFT.

So I went to bed with the temperature at 54F and virtually no airlock activity after nearly two days. By morning we had light-off, big time. That was four days ago, so 5 1/2 days from initial pitch to within 5 points of FFT final gravity estimate. Now the spunding valve is in place and pressure is increasing to the estimated value for target volumes @ 38F serving temperature.

Seven more days of conditioning and crashing and I should have finished beer. A few weeks of lagering and I'll have it on tap. Usually my ales don't finish under 6 weeks. This one will finish in 4-5 weeks. Certainly the fastest I've ever gone grain to glass with a lager.

But I still have no accurate handle on what my viable yeast count actually was. "Enough" I guess is the right answer.

Brooo Brother

 

[Brooothru]

I put 2 ounces of melanoidin in my Pils. I tried 4 but it was too much. I took second in Pils at NHC for what that's worth.

That's been my experience as well. A little melanoidin goes a loooooong way. I'll use 2-3 oz in a 5 gallon batch of Fest Bier, but more than that is overpowering to me. Almost never use it in Helles or Pils, but always in Marzen and Oktoberfest. Altbier, occasionally.

Brooo Brother

 

[Spartan1979]

Batch size?

A five gallon batch. 5.75 gallons into the fermenter.

 

[Spartan1979]

That's been my experience as well. A little melanoidin goes a loooooong way. I'll use 2-3 oz in a 5 gallon batch of Fest Bier, but more than that is overpowering to me. Almost never use it in Helles or Pils, but always in Marzen and Oktoberfest. Altbier, occasionally.

Brooo Brother

I'll put 4 oz in my Rauchbier or a Bock. 3 in my Alt. I don't put it in my Festbier, but I do a decoction on that.

 

[Brooothru]

I'll put 4 oz in my Rauchbier or a Bock. 3 in my Alt. I don't put it in my Festbier, but I do a decoction on that.

Detoction! Impressive

"Gutsiest move I ever saw, Maverick."

I've never been brave enough to try a detoction mash, but for a Fest bier it certainly is the most authentic. I think I'll stick to the melanoidin 'cheat'.

Brooo Brother

 

[friarsmith]

Pilsner Malt Showcase Results! Here is my first pass at a summary of the results. 35 participants rated seven 100% pils malt lagers from different maltsters. Each identical in terms of process and other ingredients. I plan to continue evaluating the results this weekend but would appreciate any feedback. While overall preferences are shown, the main goals of this exercise were to develop a flavor and aroma profile for the malts and assess how they impact perception of hops, body, and finish. I plan to convert the flavor descriptor results into a flavor wheel for each malt. Of the 35 participants, 12 were credentialed BJCP judges, 8 were experienced homebrewers known to me, and 15 had unknown experience. Prost!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Really interesting stuff. It would be interesting to see some descriptive feedback, though that can be a challenge with 7 malts, and 35 participants. I am looking forward to the flavor wheels.

If you counted a 1st place overall preference vote as 6 points, 2nd as 5...7th as 0...then Best Malz Pils seems to be preferred (by quite a wide margin), and the Mecca Grade does not seem to be justifying the $100 per bag price. (This is just the "all" table, not the BJCP table.)

• Best Malz Pils: 150
• Dingemans Belgian: 119
• Sugar Creek: 105
• Wey Barke: 103
• Wey Floor Malted Bohem: 102
• Avangard: 94
• Mecca Grade Pelton: 62

 

[passedpawn]

I think I need to find a bag of that best malz.

 

[monkeymath]

Thank you so much for performing this experiment and sharing the raw data with us so openly!

The process outlined in the recipe seems really solid, which gives the result a decent foundation.

As far as the descriptors go, the actual numbers are all rather low (Pilsner malt is not the most intense ingredient), so I wouldn't read too much into a difference in rating of 1.1 or 1.3: truly tasting and evaluating it objectively is really hard, so a decision between "slight" or "barely noticeable" is often quite arbitrary, I believe.
To be honest, I often don't really know what the descriptors actually mean or what perception they correspond to (what's a "graham cracker"? How does it differ from a "biscuit"? Sorry, I've never been to the US...)

From a first glance, I could only find that Best Malz seems to have a pronounced sweetness and a slightly greater malty intensity.

In the next days, I'll just add some average scores and try to categories the raw numerical values as "high", "average", "low".

Aggregating preferential data is not that easy afaik, but I'll look into it (unless we have some statistics pro among us; I am but a simple minded mathematician).

Edit:
@friarsmith Could you share with us the "raw" preferential data, that is, the complete list of rankings of each of the 35 participants?
I know it's a lot of tedious work, but this experiment is so great and I would like to make sure we get as much insight out of it as possible.
Thank you in advance!

 

[monkeymath]

I feel like this experiment is not receiving the attention it deserves. I hope it'll move to its own thread so more people can find the results

So in a first very simple-minded check on the preferential data I just looked, for every malt and every rating between 1 and 7, at the number of participants that ranked this malt at k or better. I apologize for introducing mathematical notation, but I find it hard to express references without using variables. So I will denote that number as pref(M, k), where M denotes a malt. Note that pref(M, 7) = 35 is the number of participants, for any malt M.
I will say that the participants preferred malt M over malt N if the number pref(M,k) is greater-than-or-equal-to pref(N,k) for every k and there exists some k with pref(M,k) > pref(N,k). This is a rather strict notion of 'preference', and I suppose that several sensible weaker notions exist, but I think it's fair to say that malt M scored better than malt N in this scenario.

So, anyways, under this strict notion of preference we only have a few clear results:
- Best Malz Pils beat all other malts except for Dingemans, as a total of 6 participants rated Best Malz at 6 or 7, whereas only 3 participants gave such a low score to Dingemans.
- All malts except for Barke and Sugar Creek were preferred over Mecca Grade Pelton.

The sequences pref(M, k) for the various malts are also quite interesting, I think, so here they are:

Best Malz Pils: [14, 23, 24, 27, 29, 33, 35]
Weyermann Barke: [2, 4, 14, 23, 28, 32, 35]
Avangard: [3, 8, 15, 19, 21, 28, 35]
Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian: [5, 10, 12, 19, 26, 30, 35]
Sugar Creek: [4, 8, 14, 21, 25, 33, 35]
Dingemans Belgian: [4, 11, 19, 20, 32, 33, 35]
Mecca Grade Pelton: [3, 6, 7, 11, 14, 21, 35]

From this we can read off, for every malt M, the minimum rank r such that at least 50% of all participants ranked it r or better:

Best Malz Pils: 2
Weyermann Barke: 4
Avangard: 4
Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian: 4
Sugar Creek: 4
Dingemans Belgian: 3
Mecca Grade Pelton: 6

This is sort of in-line with our result from experimenting with "preferred over": for Barke, Avangard, Bohemian and Sugar Creek, preferences are essentially split down the middle (r=4), Best Malz is notably better (r=2) and Dingemans in between (r=3), whereas Mecca had a notably worse result (r=6).

If, instead of seeking the approval of 50% of all participants, but of 80% of them, we get the following table:

Best Malz Pils: 5
Weyermann Barke: 5
Avangard: 6
Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian: 6
Sugar Creek: 6
Dingemans Belgian: 5
Mecca Grade Pelton: 7

Now, we have in shared first place Best Malz, Barke and Dingemans. While Barke was only rated among the top 2 by 4 participants, many people felt it was at least somewhat good, and only 7 put it in the two bottom ranks.


For the BJCP table, the results are indeed a bit different:

- All malts except for Barke were preferred over Mecca
- Best Malz was preferred over Mecca, Sugar Creek and Avangard
- Weyermann Bohemian was preferred over Sugar Creek, Avangard and Barke

In fact, Best Malz and Weyermann Bohemian have quite similar results here, whereas Best Malz was clearly preferred by the large sample.

For more sophisticated analysis of the results (such as "80% of tasters preferred malt M over malt N") I'd need the 'raw' preference data of each participant.

 

[Die_Beerery]

The only “results” are that this is a single data point. So in the scenario of a pilsner style beer made with only pils malt, these hops at this time, using this yeast at that temp, with this water on variance of batch to batch with this system best pils malt wins this time. N=1 is just that.

Brulosphy followers for instance need to really listen to this.

 

[monkeymath]

... which is in stark contrast to what has been said before, where it was claimed that every single beer of any style made with Best Malz Pils was superior to any other beer ever brewed throughout history ? Right...

Someone should change the thread's title to "Major fire hazard: Weyermann's Barke perpetually sparks fire in residential neighborhoods".

All of this is just about our personal experiences. This is an online forum about a hobby, not a scientific journal. And someone making an effort to reproduce the same beer with seven different malts and having the beers evaluated by 35 tasters is quite amazing in my opinion and potentially offers more insight than a single person proclaiming "I made a beer doing/using X and it is good/bad", where you have nowhere near the same control and a significantly smaller tasting panel.

A single data point is not gospel. But entirely dismissing a single - and, as far as I'm aware, the only - data point on the basis of it being the only one, does not lead anywhere. Instead, one should value every single data point and try and collect more of them.