Friday, March 21, 2008

The pilsner is bubling

Today I made the pilsner.
The first batch of pilsner I made (two weeks ago) was a waste. It was the first time I used the boiler and had forgotten all about school chemistry. As per normal, I added some citric acid to bring down the PH level. Did not really pay attention and managed to get copper oxide contamination in the pilsner. Mental note, when working with copper, DO NOT GO UNDER PH7 OR YOU WILL GET COPPER OXIDE IN YOUR BREW!!!! When I have recovered financially after this brewing madness, I will get a new hot wanter cylinder made of stainless steel.

And if poring out 60 liters of pilsner (using 10Kg of malt) was not bad enough, the pilsner malt I got from our organic supplier in the south island was crawling with weevils. 20 Kg of malt straight in the bin. A few people thought I should use it anyway as it would make "real" medieval beer. Thanks but no thanks... If I want extra protein, I prefer a nice steak. I managed to get another 10 Kg from my normal supplier in Auckland via express delivery before Easter, plus another Kg of hops.

Anyway, now when I know better and have "sealed" the copper by boiling water several times in it (before the first batch last week) as well as bug free malt, I finally made the pilsner.

The batch:
10Kg of pilsner malt
190 Gr of Hops (5.6%)

The mashing produced just over 60 Liter of 1038.
As it started to boil, I added about 75% of the hops.

After 45 minutes I added the rest of the hops and 4 pinches of Irish moss. (Trying out a suggestion to add some more hops 15 minutes before the end of the boil to give a bit more hop taste without the extra bitterness.)
After about 65 min of total boiling (gave it 5 min extra), I powered off and let the brew settle for 30 min before starting the cooling.
The end result was just under 50 liters of a nice and hoppy brew that I just had to add "Carlsberg" yeast to and it is now bubbling in the bathroom.

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