Pilsner, July 2 2009

Brewing up a series of lagers over the next few weeks. Our new house seems to warm up to the upper 70's during the past few weeks leaving fermentation to the cool temperature-controlled environment of the kegerator. The plan is to do four lagers (2 primary and 2 secondary carboys in the kegerator is the max) using the two primaries and active yeast beds twice. The first two will be new personal recipe formulations of pilsner and vienna lager (I rarely use the same recipe twice) followed by an agave lager and an oktoberfest. These all should be ready in September for Oktoberfest celebrations.
For this brew, I could have used 100% pilsner malt but I wanted to stretch out the current pilsner malt stock for all upcoming lagers. I also put in a pound of Dried Rice Extract (DRE) to boost up the gravity without adding much color (or anything else). I've used DRE before but that turned out to be an alcoholic monster.

PILSNER

5 Gallons, Multi-Step Infusion Mash, 90 Minute Boil

6lbs. Pilsner Malt
2lbs. Domestic 2-Row

Mashed:
126°F for 30 minutes
148°F for 30 minutes
Mashout at 170°F and 5 Gallon Sparge for 60min.

1lb. Dried Rice Extract at boil

0.75oz. Homegrown Magnum 60min.
0.25oz. Saaz 30min.
0.25oz. Saaz 15min.
1 Whirlfloc Tab 15min.
0.25oz. Saaz 5min.
0.25oz. Saaz 1min.

White Labs German Lager Yeast, WLP380
800ml Starter Pitched at 60°F

OG: 1.050 @ 60°F
FG: 1.011 @ 38°F - Corrected 1.010
ABV: 5.25%

Update 7/13: Racked to secondary, yeast globules still churning but fallen krausen. Current gravity is 1.015

Kegged 9/27

Aha! I finally figured out the shortcut for the degree symbol on a Mac so that I can use °F and °C or even stuff like 15° Plato. On a Mac, use Shift-Option-8.