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HOMEBREWING
RAY'S FAVORITE RECIPES
From Brewing Editor Ray Daniels

Perfect Pilsener

I remember this recipe as the first of my beers to earn the praise of an established professional brewer. Looking at it now, I see why! This is a classic Bohemian pilsener recipe with darn near everything done right. It employs specialty malts with subtlety but goes straight for the heart with the Saaz hops. If you are mashing and have the ability to ferment at lager temperatures, you should definitely give this one a try.

Extract brewers may also enjoy this recipe by substituting 6 lbs of Alexander's Sun Country Malt Extract for 8.5 pounds of the two-row malt.

O.G. 1.050
F.G. 1.015

Ingredients

10 lbs Two-row Malt (American or European)
0.75 lb Crystal malt - Light (10-40 deg L) German
0.25 lb Cara-Pils malt
0.375 lb Wheat malt
0.25 lb Munich malt

1.0 oz Saaz* (5.0% aa) - boiled 60 minutes
1.5 oz Saaz - boiled 30 minutes
0.5 oz Saaz - boiled 10 minutes
0.5 oz Saaz - boiled 5 minutes
1.5 oz Saaz - boiled Dry hopped in Secondary Fermenter

* Given the amount of hops added to this recipe, you may want to select pellet rather than whole hops to reduce wort loss. Also, if the Saaz hops available to you are below 4% alpha acid, you should select another European-type hop with an alpha acid content near 5% for the first two hop additions. Try Hallertau, Hersbruck, Spalt, Liberty, Crystal, or Mt. Hood.

1 tsp Calcium chloride was used in mash water. Sparge water was acidified with food grade lactic acid.

Wyeast Munich Lager Yeast (2308) -- 2 packages in 2 quarts of starter.

Irish Moss was used in the last 10 minutes of the boil.

Procedure

The mash for this beer included a protein rest at 130 deg F (a bit high) for 30 minutes and a saccharification rest at 154 deg F for one hour. If you can do a protein rest at 122 deg F or so, its not a bad idea, but if you can't, don't let that stop you. Just do an infusion mash at 154 deg F and go from there. My mash water volume was 15 quarts (3.75 gallons) and the sparge water volume was 5 gallons.

Total boil time was 100 minutes, with the hop additions beginning after the first 40 minutes of the boil.

Fermentation was conducted at 45 to 48 degrees for five days and then raised to 55 to 58 degrees for another 10 days.

The dry hops were added during the lagering phase which was four weeks at 35 to 40 deg F.

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